Breeds Hot Blood
by Illusionna
Summary: Beastars is a rich and diverse universe, with cracks and crevices only hinted at in the manga. This story explores the world that hybrids live in, neither one race nor the other. Caught in between two cultures, these individuals must overcome prejudice and ostracization to gain the rights that they deserve. Join Sabine and her family as they maneuver this world.
1. Chapter 1

**"He eats nothing but doves, love, and that breeds hot blood, and hot blood begets hot thoughts, and hot thoughts beget hot deeds, and hot deeds is love." Paris to Helen of Troy in _Troilus and Cressida_**

Sabine sighed, smearing the rest of the petroleum jelly over the body of the underdeveloped bird before placing it in the heated gel that would be it's home for the next week or two.

"Will it make it?" asked Kenzou, her youngest son, his 14 year old head looking strangely feminine with his antlers having shed. His large ears raised and lowered in anxiety, his caribou nose flaring as the pungent smell of the medical gel that his mother was using.

"I don't know," Sabine said honestly. Her red wolf tail drooped in disappointment in having to admit it. Her antlers hadn't shed yet, and wouldn't for months. Female caribou kept their antlers for longer than their male counterparts, and being older and almost past child bearing age, she kept hers for several years in a row before they decided to fall out and regrow. "It's very underdeveloped, it wasn't near being hatched."

"That's kinda gross," Dabi, her daughter, said. At ten years old, she was long ostrich neck leaned forward to get a closer look at the grossness she had proclaimed, her sharp chicken beak making her frown even more pronounced.

"That's how you started out," Sabine told her.

"This is the third one Mom has saved," Kenzou told his little sister, "besides you."

"Are we going to keep it?" Dabi asked.

Sabine laughed. "I suppose that depends on a lot of things." She covered the tray that little bird lay in with a light blanket and set the timer on the microwave for two hours. She would have to turn the little thing to another position to keep it forming properly and to distribute its body weight. Its delicate skin, which would be paper thin when it was full grown, and was barely there at the moment as an embryo, would have to stay moisturized and its body warm. She would be getting very little sleep for next few weeks. Already, in her mind, she was amassing a list of items she would need to obtain from the Back Street Market. She hated going there, but it easy to get whatever she wanted, and most of the shopkeepers knew her and helped her get things, even if they didn't have them to start with. She wasn't expecting to make another visit to Gouhin so soon, but it looked like she would be seeing him sooner rather than later. Thank goodness for those with real university degrees and the connections they brought.

"Is it a hybrid, do you think?" asked Kenzou. He looked every bit of the caribou that he was, tall and stocky, the only sign of his wolf grandfather being his teeth within his perfectly formed caribou muzzle.

"Probably not," Sabine said with a sigh. "I think Dabi was a special case." She winked at the little girl, dressed in her frilly pink nightgown. The girl blinked sleepily. "To bed with both you," she said. "You have school in the morning."

In the distance, through the open window, the sound of a wolf's howl carried through the night, as if the full moon herself helped it along. The hair on Sabine's ruff rose by instinct, but her mouth drew back in a smile, showing her the teeth she inherited from her father. Both kids perked up, and Sabine's second son, who had retreated to his bedroom shortly after the lion had dropped the chick off, came running into the living room.

"What's it say, Mom, what's it say?" His voice sounded much younger than his seventeen years. His antlers hadn't shed yet, but Sabine knew they would any day now, giving him a much younger look.

"Is it a male or female?" Dabi asked.

"Where is it coming from?" Kenzou insiststed.

"It's a male," Sabine explained. "And he's just saying 'Here I am.'" She went to the open window and looked out. "I think it's coming from the hill, perhaps from the school up there."

"Answer him," Kenzou said.

Sabine clicked her tongue and gave Kenzou a dubious look.

"Please?" he begged.

Sabine sighed, there was little she could deny her children. They did not ask much, and what was a howl, besides rude? Her neighbors already thought little of her, just by how she looked. What difference would a howl make? She took a deep breath, leaned out the window, and let out a long, high, answering howl.

Jack the labrador laughed out loud at Legosi's surprised face when the distant howled echoed his. "Oh my god!" he giggled, his tail wagging quickly. "Somebody answered you!"

Legosi the gray wolf blushed, but his tail was also wagging. "She's just saying 'I'm here.'," Legosi shrugged.

"I know," Jack jumped, his ears flopping with the movement, then came to the edge of the wall to look out over the city from their high perch at Cherryton School. "But that's so cool that she answered." He looked up at his best friend, smiling for the first time in a long while, and enjoyed the feeling his tail wagging behind him.

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	2. Chapter 2

Sabine walked into the nursery with the nest basket in her hand, the chick, now covered with the sweet, yellow, downy fuzz of pinfeathers, nestled inside, surrounded by blankets with a hot water bottle on the bottom of the basket. She held out the basket to the nursery teacher. "You have to take his baby."

"Hello, Sabine-san," the roe deer hybrid sang, "Today isn't your regular day."

The youngsters perked at the opening of the door, shouting, "Auntie Sabine, Auntie Sabine!"

The nursery teacher looked at the baby in the basket with a surprised look on her face , then back to the wolf-caribou.

"He's trying to kill me," Sabine said breathlessly.

The nursery teacher's smile disappeared as she stared at the basket in horror.

"He's never is quiet," Sabine continued, her voice shaky.

As if to punctuate her words, the chick cheeped, "Ichi! Ichi! Ichi!"

"He never sleeps. Sensei," she thrust the basket into the nursery teacher's arms. "I have to sleep. I haven't slept in 46 hours."

The roe deer gasped.

Without asking for an invitation, Sabine walked over to the reading nook and collapsed down with a heavy sigh onto the beanbag there. The beanbag squeaked under her weight, but its seams held true. An oryx-bear hybrid bounced up to her as she made herself comfortable. "Auntie Sabine," he said. "Read a story?"

"Are you going to take a nap?" she asked, opening her eyes half way.

"No!" the little boy announced, scandalized.

"Then go play," Sabine closed her eyes again, settling into the bean bag.

"I sleep Auntie Sabine," said a little anteater-camel hybrid.

Without opening her eyes, she reached out and took the toddler in her arms, hugging him to her like a stuffed animal and going limp.

The door to the nursery opened, and the attention of the nursery schoolers was brought to it, all of them singing, "Uncle Scaly!" at the old Komodo dragon that came in. His flannel shirt was rolled up at the sleeves to show muscled forearms, a pair of reading glasses dangled from a chain around his long neck. He laughed as he was inundated with hybrid children hugging at his long legs. Several of them held books in their little hands, waving them like banners to catch his attention.

"Ichi! Ichi, ichi, ichi!" The old komodo dragon looked over at the nursery teacher who held a nesting basket in her arms.

"A new pupil?" he asked in a jovial voice, smiling widely.

The roe deer shook her head. "Only for the day," she answered. "I think." She looked toward the reading corner of the nursery, her eyes resting on the wolf-caribou hybrid female that sprawled over a beanbag. She held a little boy in her arms, clutched to her ample chest tightly, who was also sleeping. A tiny lion-jeroba cub lay on the female's hip, a thin arm and leg dangling on each side of her amble curves.

"Oh my," the komodo dragon chuckled. "Mummy is sleep deprived?"

"Apparently, Gosha-san," the teacher said with a giggle. "I think she might be getting a little long in the tooth for this sort of thing."

Gosha raised an eye ridge. "We all know where babies come from."

The teacher laughed and shook her head. "This one is a shock egg," she explained. "Sabine has done it before, raised them and then found families for them. Except for one, that ended up being a hybrid. She kept her. She sent her and her sons here, and she came here when she was little, when my grandparents still ran the school."

Gosha looked back at the sleeping female, who was now depositing a stream of drool between the toddler's ears. She was built largely like a caribou, with strong arms and powerful thighs. She sported large, rounded antlers at the top of her head, flanked by ears that were too large and round to be canine and too pointed and skinny to be caribou. Her muzzle had the same issue, too round to be one species, but too skinny to be the other. Her fur was something between red and gold with black highlights scattered about, with a slight canine ruff at her neck, and a puffy, undeniably canine tail. She was a good looking female, and she's seemed vaguely familiar to him, though he couldn't place where he'd seen her before.

"Her brother came here, too, and his kids," the teacher went on. "She and her brother were instrumental in getting the hybrid marriage laws changed those years ago."

"Coronet Law?" Gosha asked, taking one of the two adult chairs in the room and putting it down in the middle of the room. "I remember that lawyer. He does a lot of pro bono work for hybrids."

"He is a hybrid," she laughed.

Gosha nodded in agreement, "I know." He took a book from one of the children and sat down. "She made some impressive speeches to the Diet, as I recall."

"The Coronet Law firm makes donations to the school to help keep us open. We also get one from her late husband's company." She looked fondly at the sleeping female. "Sabine and Samyueru have been good to us."

Gosha smiled, nodding. "This is a good place to be good to."

The nursery teacher herded the straggler children to the group, urging them to sit down. "And now you find her asleep in my school." She shook her head. "Strange how the world works."

Gosha sat down, opened the book and nodded his thin head once again. "Strange, indeed."


	3. Chapter 3

She wasn't expecting to come back to The Back Alley Market so soon after her last visit, but she'd been told by several people that something was different about the place. As she walked the streets, she could find nothing different, everything seemed as it always did; herbivores begging for money in exchange for meat, venders selling illegal wares, pickpockets weaving in between customers, and those who were mentally ill and have wandered in, never to find their way back out. This place became home to them, a surreal sort of existence that brought the nightmare of their out-of-mindness to life.

But there was something off. It was a feeling in the air, a difference in the way that The Back Alley Market pressed on her. There was no way that it couldn't. She always wore clothes that brought out the red wolf in her, showing off the ruff of her neck, making sure the skirt she wore was short to accentuate her bushy, wagging tail. She made sure to hold her ears in a relaxed position, always making her sure tail was moving back and forth, and she smiled wide, to show the canines that her caribou mouth shouldn't have. The Back Alley Market still pressed, it did on everyone. But the way in which pressed was not the same, like the way that the air changes when a storm is coming.

She'd left Takahiro, her eldest son, to watch over Kenzou, Debi, and Eichi, which they had decided to call the baby chick. He seemed to like it, whenever they called him by name, he would intone "Ichi! Ichi, ichi, ichi!" Of course, he'd intoned it before they'd named him...constantly. _That kid is going to talk someone's ear off when he's older._ She sighed, coming to terms with the fact that it could very well be her ear.

She smiled at a cabybara that still had all of his fingers and toes, she could see through his open sandals. He obviously wasn't selling his body parts. Maybe he was buying other body parts. She tried not think about it.

Despite the fact she was half red wolf, she'd never had the desire to eat meat. Looking at it made her stomach roil. The smell of it was wretched, the scent of blood made her curl her nose in an attempt to keep it at bay. And it was all over the place here. And while eggs smelled wonderful, she'd tried to eat them as a child, and had been unable to stomach them. They were dry and thick and the thought that it had once had to potential to be a chicken or ostrich or emu or eagle made her unable to crack one open. Once she'd heard about shock chicks, she was afraid to even touch the things.

She passed a stall of eggs that promised each and every one was fertilized. It made her heart heavy to think of the fate of each of those unborn children.

A child of about five or six, brushed up against her. She glanced down at the tiger cub, raising her eyebrows. "No luck with me today, sweetie."

The little tigress let out something between a sigh and hiss and moved onward. Sabine's yen was safe in her bra, where one would have to be very brave, or very stupid, to try to steal it. It was largely depleted anyway, after her tea with Gouhin. The Giant Panda had been late to the cafe, offering some excuse about a patient taking up all of his time.

Sabine rolled her eyes. "Really?" she teased. "A patient? You sure you weren't visiting with your wife? You look all worked up."

Gouhin gave her a nasty look, one that was nastier than normal.

She leaned forward and put her hand on her friend's forearm. "When was the last time you went home, Gouhin?" she asked.

The Great Panda avoided her gaze with his tiny, panda eyes beneath his glasses.

"You need to go home to visit." She cut him off before he could say anything, "To _visit._ Your son will be grown before you know it, and your wife needs to know you are still alive and kicking. They can't survive emotionally on rumors alone."

He laughed derisvely, in that way that let her know she'd hit a nerve. "You would know, huh?"

_Sabine lifted her ears at the sound of the shuffling of tiny feet headed toward her bedroom. Takahiro's tiny muzzle poked through her door, the round, dark nose of his father. "What's the matter, sweetheart?" she asked._

"_I couldn't sleep," the four year old caribou said. "Can I sleep with you?"_

"_Of course," his mother replied, motioning him over. He crawled into her bed, cuddling up to her ever expanding belly that held his little brother. She kissed his nose, and his little, starfish shaped hands that were, thankfully, without her claws. She laid her muzzled against the top of his head, him being far too young for antlers yet, before wrapping her arms around him and holding him close._

"_Mommy," he asked into the dark, just as she was about to drift back off to sleep._

"_Yes, Takahiro?" _

"_Why does Daddy never stay the night with us?"_

_She opened her eyes, all drowsiness leaving her. Her stared over his head, seeing the tops of his overlarge baby-ears in her peripheral vision. "He has to be somewhere else," she said quietly._

"_Where?" the little boy asked. "He works during the day, not at night."_

_How was she supposed to explain something like this to someone so young. She had hoped the question wouldn't come up for several more years, that she could delay the answer. "He has other people he has to take care of, also," she said slowly._

_Takahiro nodded into her neck. "He is good at taking care of people, isn't he, Mommy?"_

_Sabine blinked back tears, clutching her son closer to her. "He is," she managed to get out without her voice cracking. _

"Yes," she replied heavily, reaching for her tea. "I would know."

A/N: Thank you for reading and reviewing. If you enjoy this, or any of my works, please consider heading over to /illusionna and treating me to a cup of coffee. Also, let me know what kinds of things you'd like to see on my ko-fi page so we can all stay connected. (Especially while we are apart).


	4. Chapter 4

As the day ended, Sabine left Gouhin satisfied. He promised to visit his wife and son for longer than just a few hours, and that he would be on the lookout for a chicken family that would want to adopt a baby. Sabine did not mention that Eichi did nothing but talk, pee, eat, and poop in that order. The Giant Panda didn't look good, he look worn out. She knew he was prone to working crazy hours, and then crashing. She would hate to see what his crashes looked like. If they were just him sleeping for three days, she would guess he was lucky. It wasn't until after he'd left that she'd realized she'd forgotten to ask him about the difference in feeling in The Back Alley Market. She chided herself under her breath for it. He would most likely know, while he rarely got involved in the politics of the place he called home, he was ever watchful of it—a sentinel looking for those who were savable from the sin of carnivorism. She had sent had him in the direction of more than one soul that had fallen into the pit of that error.

She paid for the sweet roll at the vendor, thanking the lion before being extraordinarily rude and turning away, taking a huge bite out of the treat in the middle of public. It was delicious. As her sharp teeth sank into the bready gooiness, the sugar touched her tongue and exploded into a million tiny bombs of sweetness that then spread out to coat her mouth threatening to envelope-

She was jerked out of her reverie by a yowl in the near distance.

She raised her ears to their full height, swiveling them in the direction of the noise. A few people in the market did the same, but most then just passed on, noting the sound and then going on their way. Unlike the howl from Cherryton School on the hill from the week before, this one was quite close and quite obviously a call for help. A second yowl hit her ears. She dropped what was left of her sweet roll and ran in the direction of the noise.

She let out a howl as she ran, if nothing else to triangulate the position. Pumping the legs she inherited from her caribou mother, she blurred by the people around her, dodging in and out those left in the market place in the lowering light of the evening. He answered, but it was cut off. It was long enough for her to pinpoint his position, to know it was male, and that it was not a wolf, but a dog of some kind.

Weaving through buildings and alleys, she exited the Back Alley Market proper, coming the backs of seedy, low rent apartments, love hotels, and less savory, though legal, shops. She emerged at the back of a grimy warehouse, the dim light of the day even darker with the shadows of the long buildings, the silence around the place indicating that workers had already gone home for the day. A young canine, a jack russell from the look of him, was surrounded by a group of tods. The jack russell had his straight out stiff behind him, an obvious attempt at keeping it from bending between his legs, but in doing so he'd forgotten about his ears, which were plastered her his head. His brown eyes were as wide as saucers, and he was backed up against the cinder block of the building, his backpack making his back bend awkwardly.

The tods moved with the voluptuousness that all foxes do, their hips swinging, smiles on their faces. They were probably brothers and husbands of inarigumi, Sabine mused. While the males were not allowed in the gang proper, they hung around on the periphery doing jobs that ingratiated them with the vixens higher up, a favor for a favor. This looked very much like that kind of activity, though what the inarigumi would want with a boy who barely not a pup, Sabine couldn't tell.

"You boys have him a little out numbered, don't you?" she asked, coming to a stop near the end of the alley where the group gathered.

The skulk of foxes turned to her unison, and Sabine would have laughed if she had been in a different predicament. Their red and gray faces, all beautiful, even in the fading light, glared at her interruption. "This isn't any of your business, lady," one of them said slowly. "Get yourself going, before someone gets hurt."

"It looks like someone is already in the running to get hurt," Sabine said, walking toward them. Her feet barely made a sound as they touched the ground, toe to heel. She looked to the young jack russell backed against the wall. "The odds aren't all that good. You really should let me even them."

"An herbivore female against four carnivore males?" one of the tods stepped forward with a laugh. "Are you serious?"

Swaggering her hips as she continued to walk toward them, she laughed back, letting her tail come into view and opening her mouth wide, drawing her lips back to show her teeth. "An herbivore-carnivore hybrid female that is half again the size of four carnivore males," she corrected. "And yes, I am quite serious."

One of the tods backed away and another one swore.

"Didn't your mother teach you not to use such language?" Sabine asked, just before she rushed the group.

With her head down, her antlers in front of her, she struck the tod in the front, catching him in the ribs. She threw him across the alley with a head toss, causing him to fall loudly into a pile of trash cans. The tod that had backed away made a dash for the jack russell, who had made no move to run for it with the distraction given to him. _Dumb mutt,_ Sabine couldn't help thinking. She tried to reach for him, but the other two tods got to her first.

The first bit at her, catching her forearm in his muzzle. She let out a grunt, sending out a front kick with her powerful legs at the second tod who was coming at her from the other side, sending him sprawling away from her, but missing his solar plexus and not doing any real damage to him. She then swung her elbow with her free hand into the tod attached to her arm. He yipped, letting go. She raised a knee to his chin, the tods head careening backward.

Catching movement in her periphery vision, she turned to intercept the tod she'd kicked away, grabbing his ear and twisting him, bringing his head around and down to her stomach. She kicked him again, this time in the shoulder. He hit the ground below her with a grunt. She rested her foot on his temple, her herbivore vision catching the other three tods stumbling up from their positions to make another rush at her.

The canine hadn't moved from his position at the wall. Something wasn't adding up. Why wasn't he running away. This wasn't an ordinary mugging, and he hadn't just been calling for help.

Sabine held her hand out to the tods that were heading her way, "Don't move!" They stopped, to her surprise, she was expecting them to keep coming at her. But they weren't trained fighters, just thugs. They hadn't lived their entire lives in fear of being bullied, in fear of their lives for being different, having to had to know how to fight in order to survive. And they'd figured out that she had. She kept her eyes on the canine at the wall. "What did you steal from them?"

If you enjoy this or any of my other stories, please consider supporting me on ko hypen fi dot com slash illusionna Buy me a coffee and tell me what you'd like to see both on my ko-fi and this story.


	5. Chapter 5

"What?" the jack russell asked.

Sabine growled impatiently, showing her canines. "What did you steal from them?" she asked again, enunciating each word.

The young man swallowed hard, opened his muzzle to speak and then closed it again.

"Are you having trouble understanding me?" she said louder.

"Yeah," one of the tods said.

"You, shut up!" she pointed at him.

"Yes, ma'am," he lowered his head and nodded.

"I'm only going to ask you one more time, what did you steal from them, kid?" She held her hand out, making it clear that he didn't have to answer in words.

This seemed to give the boy some relief. He reached behind him, not taking his eyes from Sabine, and from a pocket in his backpack, pulled out a USB stick. Without moving from his place against the building, he held it out to her.

She released her foothold on the fox under her and took it from the dog. Then she tossed it to one of the other tods. "Get out of here, before I change my mind."

"Yes, ma'am," he said again. All four turned tail and ran.

Turning back to the canine, she put her hands on her hips, her forearm where she'd been bitten beginning to ache and scowled. "Whatever was on that drive could not have been worth your life," she scolded. "And they would have killed you. You know that?"

The young man nodded. "Yeah," he said.

"Was it worth it?" she asked, her ire rising, along with the fur on her neck again. "Would it have been worth it?"

The young man shrugged.

She suppressed the urge to punch him in the mouth.

"Why didn't you run while I was fighting them?" she almost yelled.

"Because he was waiting for me," a deep voice said smoothly behind her. The sound of it sent a shiver down her spine, despite the fact she had never heard it before. It was terrifying, like it came from underground, the confidence in it was utter and complete, unshakable, almost immortal.

She turned toward it, and before her stood a black stallion, just as beautiful and terrifying as the voice. He was tall, towering over her, and she was by no means a sprite. His long midnight mane was held back in ponytail, his white oxford shirt tucked neatly into a pair of skinny blue jeans. Though she had never met him in person, there was no doubt in her mind, body, or soul who this male was. Or why the boy hadn't run away if he was summoned by him.

"Well, you're a lot late," she sassed, tilting her head to the side and sounding much sassier than she felt.

"So it would seem," he said, striding up to her.

She noticed he had a slight limp and that his right knee was a little swollen. He held his hand out to the canine. "The drive."

"She gave it back to them," he whimpered.

There was a moment of complete silence, where Sabine could hear her heart beating in her ears, and she fought to keep them from wanting to plaster themselves on her head like a frightened puppy. She made sure to swivel them forward, as if she were intensely interested in their conversation, perhaps they were talking about cake or babies.

"She did, did she?" The black stallion glared at the boy. "And how did she do that when you had it?"

"She asked for it," the jack russell whimpered, his tail tucked so far between his legs that stuck out the front of his pants.

"And you just gave it to her?" the horse took a step toward the dog.

Sabine felt the pull of whether to intervene or not, her own body inching toward the two of them.

"Do you know who she is?" the dog asked in a disbelieving voice.

The swell of pride that overcame Sabine's chest almost brought her to tears. Here, in a dirty side street with blood on the ground, just outside of the Back Alley Market, this young man was comparing her to the Sublime Beastar! She could have taken him into her arms and kissed his face until his fur fell out.

Yafya turned his snout to her, tilting his head to the side in consideration. "Should I?" he asked derisively.

The boy's mouth dropped open.

Sabine straightened her shoulders, the pride hardening into resolve. Should he? Maybe if he did the job he was supposed to do, he would! "Should you be sending children to do deadly jobs for you, then leaving them to fend for themselves and not coming to their aid when they call?" she asked quickly. "I am guessing that howl he let out was for you, and not for me." Before he could answer, she continued, "You are supposed to making the world a better place for herbivores and carnivores, alike, not trolling around the city like a vigilante letting babies do dirty work for you."

She could hear the boy whimpering, and her ears moved without her volition in his direction, only a fraction, but so did the Sublime Beastar's eyes. He noticed. The air in the little street was electric as the Black Devil stared her down, his upper lip seemed to fight wanting to raise, as if he had canines that he wished to bare at her. He stretched his neck, raising his head to star her down as she raised her own to match his, fighting with all her might not to put her tail between her legs.

Yafya finally opened his lips, showing his large teeth, and bent down to bring his mouth only inches from her muzzle. He parted his jaws, as if he were going to bite her nose, when he exhaled in a huff, his nostrils flaring. "No," he said. "I leave the dirty work to people like you."

Sabine bladder cried out to be emptied.

But rather than leave a puddle on the street, her bladder seemed to fill her empty mind with nonsense. She managed to keep her tail out stiff behind her. She managed her keep her ears up, and pointing toward the jack russell, who had stopped breathing altogether. She managed to keep her eyes on Yafya, who was obviously waiting for her to piss her pants. Then, with no thought at all, her lopped her canine tongue out and licked him on his wide, equine nose, right in between his nostrils.

He stood up abruptly, a look of utter disgust on his face, his eyes crossed as he tried to look at what she might have deposited on his nose besides her obviously germ-laden spit. All he had to to do was shout "Eww, cooties!" and the picture of an primary school playground would be complete.

As for Sabine, that was exactly how she felt, like a primary schooler. To a canine, the action was one of slight submission without a full backing down, one that a child gives to an adult, or a female to a male of almost equal standing but not quite. The disgust she felt with herself was most likely equal to what Yafya showed on his modelesque face at the moment, on it was directed at herself. "There," she shot at him, taking a step back, as if she'd done it on purpose. "Now your nose is clean!"

She turned to the jack russell, in a desperate rush to get attention off of her. "You," she said, "why are you still here?"

The boy made a sound in between a bark and a whimper before asking, "Isn't your brother a lawyer?"

The question knocked the sense back into her, and she physically felt the ruff of her neck lower. "Yes." She dug in her pocket, keeping her eyes deliberately off of Yafya, who was boring holes into her head with his, and took out a business card. "You show up at his office, tomorrow morning, six o'clock, and he will help you get out of whatever trouble you're in. I will tell him to expect you."

The boy looked to Yafya, and Sabine followed his gaze.

The Black Devil tilted his head to the side, the same bored, angry look on his face was now on it that had been on it before. "Best do what she says," he said, his deep voice almost hypnotic. "You do know who she is, after all, don't you?"

Again, the jack russell didn't move, staring at the horse as if in a trance.

With a move that was so fast, Sabine barely had time to register it in her brain, Yafya shot his long leg out in a sidekick, the flat of his red hightop sneaker hitting the wall next to the boy's shoulder. Dust floated in the air about the canine and the sound echoed through the empty space.

Both the boy and Sabine let out yelps of surprise. Right after his had left his mouth, the boy ran into the fading the light and out of sight.

Sabine turned to Yafya and put her hands on her hips, "Was that necessary?" she asked, hoping her voice sounded more firm than her legs felt.

"Just as necessary as you giving back valuable information to criminals that could have put a lot of people in prison for a long, long time, yes." He smiled at her sadistically.

"How was I supposed to know that was what it was?" she asked, flicking her ear. "I thought it was an ordinary mugging."

"Go home," he said to her in the same tone of voice she'd spoken to the jack russell, turning from her and waving her off as if she were a fly buzzing about his head. "And let the professionals do their work."

Watching his rapidly retreating back, she shot, "Last time I checked in the with the DIET, I thought was exactly what I was doing." When the retort got no response, she turned the opposite direction. "Pretentious equine," she said, making sure it was loud enough for him to hear.

If you like this, or any of my work, please consider visiting me at ko-fi dot com slash illusionna We can talk about all things Beastars, fanfic, story creation, and even tell me what you'd like to see in this one.


	6. Chapter 6

As soon as he found a ladder leading the fire escapes, Yafya the Sublime Beastar scrambled up it to the tops of the roofs of the skyscrapers, wanting to blindfold his eyes for some relief, more emotional than anything else. Tonight had been one mistake after an other, and his 350 degree vision was pressing down on him like a circular curse, threatening to overwhelm him just as much as the rage, disgust, and disappointment that was burning in his gut.

He changed directions and followed Sabine the caribou-red wolf from where she stormed off from their encounter. Of course he knew she was was. Only someone living under a rock wouldn't. She was one of the most dangerous creatures that walked in society, a breathing ideologue, the very reason that life was deteriorating the way that it was and the very reason that the animals living around it couldn't see the crumbling in front of them. Somehow, she had managed to live in the very society she was advocating against, have the privileges she was lobbying for, all because of those she was deeming her enemies. She hadn't gotten it through her antlered skull, even after all these years, that wasn't how the world really worked. He didn't know if her public appearances was an act she was putting on or if that was what she truly believed, but after meeting her for the first time today, he was inclined to think the latter. If that was true, he had no idea how she'd managed to keep that ideology and work in the circles she did.

She was true to her word to Toby the jack russell. The first thing she did was get on the phone to her brother and tell him to be at his practice at 6 the next morning to meet an unnamed canine in trouble. _Short and to the point,_ Yafya was impressed. Unlike her DIET speeches, which were neither short nor to the point, phone conversations with her lawyer brother seemed to be a different thing altogether.

"_Hybrids are not degenerates," she said in a public speech once. "We are not born evil, just as no one is born evil. People are made to be evil," she continued. "They are made to be evil by lack of love, by fear. And just as one is made to be evil by fear, one can be brought back from evil by love. There is no such thing as transpersonal, unmitigated evil. I believe that."_

That had been one of the most preposterous things he had ever heard. Flowers and rainbows, childish dreams, the thing of fairy tales, all of it. Yafya knew that there was, indeed, such a thing has transpersonal, unmitigated evil. He followed it every day of his life, waking up to chase it down. He had stared it in the eyes more than once, pursued it down dark holes where no light shone, where only faith in his abilities, faith in the justice of the society that he upheld, faith in his position as Sublime Beastar kept him from falling into its clutches. He knew it existed, and it waited for fools like her to fall into its arms so it could devour them and spit them out as monsters. It was all he could do not to be utterly revolted by people like her, to keep his feelings to only pity was the best he could do.

As she walked, she had a spring in her step, her tail began to wag as if it were a matter of course, in alternate rhythm to her hips. She cradled her bitten arm to her stomach, in complete opposition to the self control she had shown with him as they'd stared each other down in the alley below. She wasn't dressed for a fight, she was in a skirt and dress flats, women tended to wear pants and heavy boots if they were kickers. A skirt gave too much for an enemy to grab onto. He was honestly impressed with the stance she'd taken with him. Physically, she hadn't shown any signs of fear, and had even had the presence of mind to be outright defiant. He could still feel the tingle of her tongue on his nose between his nostrils, her breath had smelled of sweet roll, along with the fear that rolled off of her body, the musk of it that mixed with the exhale so close to his muzzle. It was only a stupid or crazy animal that wasn't afraid of him, and she was obviously neither, despite what she tried to portray to Toby the jack russell terrier.

It was obvious she wasn't used to being followed, she made no move to cover her tracks, to look for someone tracing her movements, and headed straight for her home in a middle class apartment building in a middle class section of town.

He watched from an adjacent rooftop, the anger inside of him dissipating as it always did, to a deep seated dissatisfaction. His knee throbbed from his fight with that pack of mongooses earlier, which he hadn't counted on, but couldn't let stand either. They'd been robbing a store and he'd just happened upon it. It had only taken him a moment to decide to intervene, but even with his advantage of size and experience, six mongooses in a clothing store against him in such tight quarters, he was bound to get something twisted or bruised. He got more bruised and twisted than he'd counted on. But he hadn't gotten anything bitten. And the police had arrived to take care of the clean up, but it had caused him to be late for Toby's pick up, which he'd obviously botched by being chased down by those foxes. And then called for help, to which Sabine had answered him.

Through the window into her living room, he could see her eldest son wrapping her arm in a bandage, the mouths of all three of her children, the two caribou and the one bird hybrid, chattering on. He could see their mouths moving, but was too far away to hear what they were saying. It was obvious she was brushing off their questions, because she kept shaking her head no. It was an ordinary domestic scene, like any other. He watched as they ate dinner, got ready for bed, Sabine kissed each of them good night, and then took a basket in her arms to her own bedroom, where she laid down next to it and tossed and turned for a while before turning out her light, the disgust in his chest growing with each moment that passed.

It was only then that Yafya, his knee aching to the point that he had trouble straightening it, left his perch to head back to his own apartment. His mice would fuss over him like little old ladies, and he would deserve it this time. It was supposed to be a smooth operation, easy. Nothing had gone like it was supposed to. Nothing.

And how he was going to have to reevaluate the whole strategy since Toby had screwed the whole plan up. He glanced back the now blackened apartment of Sabine the caribou-red wolf. Damn her. Why couldn't she just have stayed in the gutter where she belonged?

If like this, or any of my works, please consider visiting me at ko-fi dot com slash illusionna We can talk about all things Beastars, fanfiction, story or anything else you'd like, including what you'd like to see happen in this story!


	7. Chapter 7

Sabine's phone rang at 7:15 in the morning, just as the kids were out the door to take the subway to school. She figured out how to strap the nesting basket onto her chest so that she could carry Eichi around with her, stuffing him into it so he wouldn't be jostled around with her movements. His pin feathers were starting to come in, and he didn't need as much heated gel any more. However, being stuffed in a basket with less gel sitting on a heating pad resting on Sabine's chest did not stop him from constantly chanting, "Ichi! Ichi! Ichi!" in his high pitched, rhythmic voice.

She glanced at her phone, pressed it on when she saw it was her brother. Before she could say good morning, he said, "You forgot to mention one very important thing about my new client this morning, Saby!"

She tried to zone out Eichi's chanting. "I did?"

"Yeah," he said sarcastically. "The Beastar?"

Had she? She'd been so shaken up by her showdown with Yafya that it was all she thought about the entire night. How had she not mentioned it to him when she'd called. "I-" she couldn't think of anything to say.

"Meet me for lunch," he said, clearly annoyed. "Regular time, regular place." He then abruptly hung up.

She looked down at Eichi, feeling fully chastised. "Well, doesn't look like today is getting any better, is it?"

She met Samayueru at their regular lunch place on the wharf not far from his law office. The noddle place was a small dive, the wind from the sea whipping everyone's fur, along with the banners and flags, as it blew from the ocean. Her twin was waiting for with her arms crossed the double breasted suit coat he wore, and a frown on his handsome caribou face.

"Ichi!" Eichi greeted him from underneath the several blankets Sabine had stuffed on top of him so he wouldn't catch a cold from the wind.

"Bless you," Samayueru grumbled to the nesting basket attached to his sister's chest, before turning from the two of them and entering the noodle shop.

Manni, the otter that ran the place, came out from the back, a smile on his muzzle. "Hello!" he sang. The smile vanished when he saw Samayueru face. "Uh oh."

"Back room clean?" Samayueru asked.

"Checked fifteen minutes ago. Clean as a whistle." Manni stratched the back of his head, small bits of brown fur flying off as he did. "You in trouble, Sabine?"

"If I am, it's by accident," she groused.

"Ichi!" the baby chimed in.

"By accident is always way worse than the purposeful kind," Manni said with a shake of his head. "Whose that?" He leaned in toward Sabine's breasts.

"Ichi!"

Sabine gestured toward the basket, "He's Eichi," she said, since the baby had already introduced himself.

"You can watch him," Samayueru added, reaching behind his sister and unlatching the basket, "while we talk uninterrupted." He emphasized the last word.

Manni nodded, taking the basket and moving he covers to take a look a the chick and motioning over two of his waiters over at the same time. "Awww, ain't it cute?"

"Do you know any chicken families that want a baby?" Sabine asked hopefully.

"Is it a girl?" Manni asked.

"I don't think so," she admitted in a disappointed voice.

"Too bad," Manni shook his round head. "Going to be hard placing a rooster."

Her shoulders dropped and she sighed heavily. "Dumb eggs," she mumbled, turning toward the private room that waited for her and Samayueru.

Manni gave the basket to one of the waiters. "Watch this baby," he said, then walked off.

"Ichi!"

"Isn't it hard to sex chicks?" said the waiter.

"That's what I heard," the other replied.

"Maybe we could put a bow on it's head and just pass it off as a girl," the first said.

"That's not going to actually make it a girl, you know that, right?" the second waiter outside the door told the first as the door closed behind Samayueru and Sabine.

Samayueru opened it again quickly and called out, "Manni, you and your wife, that's it!" then closed it again and sat down at the table, glaring at his sister.

"Why do we have two waiters outside our door?" she asked.

"They're guards," he said firmly.

"I prefer to think of them as waiters with guns," she corrected. "And why do we need to have waiters with guns?"

"You," he pointed at her, his scowl deepening, "have done it this time."

"Done what?" she asked, raising her hands in defense.

"What did you do to your arm?" he asked, finally spying the bandage on wound.

"I got in a fight yesterday, remember?"

"Toby said you kicked those foxes tails." Samayueru's scowl faded somewhat.

She smirked, "I did," she replied. "But not before one of them bit me."

"Did you go to the hospital?" he asked.

The door opened, letting a chant of "Ichi!" followed by one of the waiters saying "Ichoo," through, as Manni's wife came in carrying cups of soup.

"Thank you," both caribou-red wolf hybrids said in unison before turning back to each other.

"No, I didn't go to the hospital, I didn't need to go to the hospital. I disinfected it and went to bed." It was her turn to scowl, as the frustration from the past two days began to come to the forefront. "Stop being a jerk and tell me what's going on."

"You go involved with one of the Beastar's machinations, that's what's wrong, Sabine," he said, leaning forward. His antlers were shaped the same as hers, but much larger, since, as a male, he shed them and regrew them each year. And like her, the golden fur around his ears was beginning to have flecks of silver intertwined in it, along with a few silver slivers in the black of his ears. Unlike her, however, it made him look distinguished. It made her look old, so she colored it.

"I could have told you that last night," she shot back.

Samayueru sighed heavily and shook his head. "This isn't a small thing," he said. "This is the opposite of a small thing."

"A big thing," she informed him.

He glared at her. "Sabi, Yafya is not known as the Black Devil for the fun of it!" Samayueru hissed.

"He's known as the Black Devil to criminals he's trying to bring to justice," she shot back. "Animals who are predating on other innocent animals."

Samyueru's sucked his lips in and squinted his eyes, as he always did when he was trying to hold in an insult. "If that were true," he started.

"Don't talk to me in your lawyer voice!" she cut him off, leaning forward toward him.

They stared at each other for a few seconds before Samayueru let out a huff through his nose.

"If it were true that all he was doing was taking down predators," he said, his voice more like what he began with.

"You know that's not all he's doing," she interrupted him again. "He's out pretending he's a superhero, when he's supposed to be changing the laws to make the world a better place for everyone in it, not a herbivore here or and carnivore there."

"If his chasing predators, as part of his carrying out of justice," Samayueru continued as if he hasn't been cut off a second time, "why, in all these years, hasn't he approached Gouhin? Me? You?"

Sabine stared at him, her mind reeling for an answer. She didn't have one. "Do you know something I don't?" she asked slowly.

"I know a whole lot of things you don't know now, after talking to Toby, now don't I?" he snapped, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms again.

"Toby is the pup from last night?" she asked, her voice chastened.

"He's 17, still in school, has a criminal record, a convoluted story, and one long row to hoe in front of him." She waited for more information. "You know I can't give you any more information than that."

She sighed heavily, "Counselor/client privilege," she mumbled.

"But," he said with a hopeful lilt in his voice, "I did tell him I was going to assign him a psychologist in case he needed one if this went to court."

"Me," she answered proudly.

He nodded.

"You think this is going to go to court?" she asked.

He paused and then sighed deeply. "This involved Yafya, it will never go to court," he said quietly.

"What are you talking about, Sam?" Sabine asked. "Things involving Yafya go to court all the time."

"No, crimes that Yafya has busted go to court and they are always found guilty. Things like this don't go to court, Sabi." The sobriety in Samayueru's voice made the hair on his sister's neck stand on end. "The Beastar doesn't make the law, he is above the law." He leaned forward looking her in the eyes, unblinking. "Do you hear me, Sabi? Yafya is above the law, and you," he pointed at her, "most likely made him very angry, and consequently, now he is probably angry at me. And poor Toby is toast."

"Toby isn't toast," Sabine said firmly, the resolution she felt from the night before solidifying in her chest once again. The way that Samayueru was speaking frightened her more than the chastising she was getting from him earlier. This mysterious, things that happen behind the scenes in the law talk always made her uneasy.

"We all better pray he isn't toast, Sabi," Samayueru said gravely. "Because you don't want to hear the stories I've heard about what Yafya does with his breakfast toast."


	8. Chapter 8

Ichi the chicken was going to be a very yellow chick, it was quite obvious. He now needed no heating gel at all, his pin feathers, while paltry and sad looking, were all in, he was alright with only a heating pad and blankets in his nesting basket, or body to body heat if he was out of the basket. The kids liked to carry him around inside their shirts when they got home from school, and it was one of the few times that he stopped talking. Sabine wanted to bask in the blessed silence, but it only made an opening for an older child to fill said silence, to which she felt very obliged to listen as they told her about how their day was filed.

Usually it was filled with schoolwork, homework, bullying, and fighting against said bullies.

"You really should try not to fight," Sabine told Kenzou as he cradled Eichi in his shoulder. "Tell a teacher."

"The teachers don't do anything," her second son explained in a disgusted voice. Well, that much hadn't changed since she'd been to school. "Only if they actually see it. And there is nothing wrong with Dabi's face. She's just got a chicken face on an ostrich body."

Sabine licked her lips slowly, a trait she'd picked up from her father in an attempt to calm her temper. Hearing these stories from her kids brought back memories from her own childhood, which were not overly many, but enough that they were etched in her brain. She was lucky that she'd been a more pleasant mix of hybridization to look at, same with her brother and her sons, Dabi, had not been so lucky. It was with a mix of pride and anger that her older brother Kenzou, who was still at the same school as she, defended her.

"It's not like any of them are going to win any beauty pagaents, mom," Kenzou was saying. "Then one of them said, 'Just 'cause your mom is Sabine the caribou-red wolf doesn't mean anything.' So I said, 'It means she teaches us how to kick.' You should have seen that girl run!"

"Oh, Kenzou," Sabine chided. "You shouldn't bandy names around like that..."

"Then this other boy said, 'You going kick girls?' and I told him I would kick him if he didn't fly off. He flew off."

"What happens when they don't fly off?" Sabine asked.

"Then I'll kick them," Kenzou said.

"And when there are more than one of them?" Sabine pressed. "And you get kicked back? Multiple times?"

"I'll kick 'em!" Dabi came out from the bathroom, and banged her long, ostrich leg on the floor.

"No one should be kicking anyone!" Sabine announced.

Unlike his older brother, Kenzou had inherited his mother's rather fiery personality. Tahakhiro shrugged off most of the teasing he received from his schooling until it didn't happen any longer. At least, Sabine didn't think it didn't happen any longer. Once his reindeer antlers, height, and chest grew in, he wasn't such an easy target, despite the tail he'd inherited from his maternal grandfather. She'd offered, when he was old enough, to have it cropped, but he'd shrugged. "It's a tail," he had said. "It wags." Kenzou, on the other hand, embraced the fight in a way that made Sabine both uncomfortable and proud. She hadn't been able to figure out if it was because his father had been able to have less of an impact on his upbringing than he had on the more naturally gentle Takahiro, that Dabi had more more of an impact of his upbringing, or if it had been combination of both. Or perhaps he had just been born more feisty and she wasn't giving him enough credit for what rightfully his.

She sighed heavily. "Tell the teacher first!" she said firmly. "Then use words. No kicking."

"What if they kick first?" Dabi asked.

"Ichi!" Eichi said.

Sabine's face went deadpan. "Has anyone kicked you yet?" she asked.

Dabi was silent.

"Has anyone kicked you yet?" Sabine's voice was deadly.

"Mom," Takahiro came out of his room, his calm voice smooth. "You're going to have to take Dabi out shopping for new school uniforms. Hers are getting too small, you can see her panties when she bends over. And Kenzou got a C on his math quiz."

"Snitch!" Kenzou shouted.

"A C?" Sabine tucked Dabi's lack of a response in the back of her mind. Her eldest was good at knowing how to get her to change her attention, and she felt a twinge of guilt that he was more aware of their clothing and school needs than she was. "How did that happen?"

"I thought I knew it," Kenzou sulked.

"And what you are doing showing people your panties?" Sabine pointed to Dabi.

"It's not my fault my legs are so long!" she shrugged. "I'm not doing it on purpose."

"You're going to have to wear tights year round at this rate," Sabine told her, standing up and shaking her head. She rubbed her temples where a slight ache was beginning to gather each time the baby intoned, "Ichi!"

"How was work today?" Takahiro asked, coming up behind her and pressing down on her shoulders.

Her shoulders were still sore from where she had thrown the tod across the alley. "It was good," she said noncommittally, as she always did. Takahiro took too much responsibility upon himself, and she allowed him to sometimes. It eased her own, so she made it a point not to talk work with him, even though he showed a real interest in the profession. "Making progress."

Today had been her first session with Toby, the jack russell. He'd come to her therapist office, which was situated in a modest office building not far from Main Street, but not far from the Back Alley Market either, near where she had grown up. She had a daily routine going, get the kids off to school, head to the freestyle dojo where she trained with Gouhin for two hours and hoped she didn't get her tail beat both physically and intellectually, saw her patients, shopped for dinner on her way home, got the kids settled for the night, then repeated it the day. Unless something 'special' was happening. Then the routine was disrupted.

She rather liked it when the routine was disrupted, she had to admit, but the older she got, the harder it was the back into the routine once it was disrupted. And her patients were the first thing she had the inclination to fob off.

Toby sat in her client chair, a comfortable, old fashioned, high backed cushioned thing that enveloped the sitter in a velvet hug. He was visibly nervous, his ears were laid back on his head, his tail hidden behind him in the chair, his legs bouncing against each other making his entire body shake. His short white fur was floating in the air, the brown patch around his right eye vibrating with the rest of his as she shook.

"You have a lot of photos in your office," Toby finally broke the silence, looking around the many photographs of hybrid and interspecies couples that dotted the walls.

Sabine nodded. "They are all people who love me," she said. "I put them up there to remind me of that, so that when I feel like I am alone, I can remember that I am not."

"Samayueru-san said I didn't have to tell you anything," Toby quickly.

"And you don't," Sabine agreed. "You tell him what he needs to know. My job is to make sure you have what you need." What she needed was for him to be safe. Usually, the police could do that, or she could do that. She'd never felt so helpless in Samayueru her life, even when she was young. Samayueru couldn't breach his client's trust, so she had to get her client to trust her. She had to get Toby talking.

"But you're a shrink?" he asked dubiously.

"No," Sabine assured him. She pointed to a photo on her desk of a giant panda with a scar on of his eyes. "He's a shrink. I'm a therapist."

"You have a photo of your boss?" Toby asked.

Sabine laughed, at least the kid was finally talking. "He's not my boss."

"He's your boyfriend?"

Sabine sighed wistfully, and gave the photo a dreamy glance. "No," she said. "That would be unprofessional. He is a close colleague. He has developed an experimental psychiatric treatment and I help with the followup with some of his patients when they are finished."

"I thought you were a politician," Toby asked.

Sabine, dressed in a pencil skirt and oxford shirt with a blazer, complete with necklace and earrings nodded. "Politicians usually have a 'real job' in addition to pulling the wool over beasts eyes. I prefer to think of myself as an anti-politician. Hence, why I do not run for office."

"Just speak to the officials a lot," Toby finished for her.

Her smiled broadened. "You know a lot about politics for a young man still in high school," she noted. "Do you plan on being a political science major when you graduate?"

"I'm not going to university," Toby scoffed. His ears rose slightly.

_Good,_ Sabine thought. _A reaction._

"Why not?" she asked. "You're smart, that's obvious." _Smart enough for the Beastar to take notice of you._

"People like me don't go to university."

"Why not?" she countered.

He gave her a withering look.

She glanced over at another photo, this one framed on the wall. "That couple over there," she pointed to the beasts in the old photograph. One was a tall caribou female, her antlers were huge, her shoulders broad, along with her smile which accentuated a black muzzle with a white line down between her eyes. A male red wolf was next her, his muzzle came just to her very ample breast, leaned against her armpit. His ears were forward in a happy stance, the smile on his face genuine, his tongue visible with the width of it. His fur was fluffy and the ruff on his neck was long, his arm around the female caribou's waist in a protective embrace as she lazily draped her arm around his shoulders. "People told their children that they were the kind of people who didn't go to university."

Toby was silent.

"It's a very good thing that their children didn't listen to those people."

"They your parents?" Toby asked, turning slowly to examine the photo.

"Yes," she said. "They lived three blocks from his office building."

The young man looked at her amazed.

She nodded. "That's right. Samayueru-san and I grew up two kilometers from where you live Toby."

"But-" he shook his head. "But you—but you're-"

"I'm whom?" she asked, shrugging.

"You're Sabine."

"I'm a girl from the ghetto that decided she didn't want mongrels to be treated badly any longer, so I did something about it," she said gently.

He gasped at the word she used. She leaned forward, putting her hands on her knees. "Samayueru-san hasn't told me anything you told him, and he won't," she said. "But I can't help you if you don't talk to me. I am going to tell you what I guess, and you can tell me how close I am or not, the choice is yours. You can think about what you want to say and what you don't want to say for when we meet next week. And we will work on getting your grades to straight As, and getting you into a university."

"Straight As?!" Toby's ears went straight up.

"You're smart," Sabine began, "or the Sublime Beastar wouldn't have taken an interest in you." Toby's ears flattened. "I'm guessing you are very smart, probably having to do with computers, which is why you were in charge of getting what was on that drive. Probably pretty good at sneaking, too, but not as good at sneaking as a fox, which why you got caught. You have done something that has put your life or your future, or the life or future of someone you care about in danger, and that something, along with whatever you were sneaking, brought you to Yafya's attention. He made some sort of deal with you about that something in exchange for the information on that disk."

Toby's large, brown eyes were the size of saucers as he pressed himself back in his seat.

"That was not how I imagined meeting the Beastar, Toby," she said frankly, leaning back. "I imagined meeting him in a ceremony, where he was giving me an award. Not being told off to mind my own business and then to go home."

Toby gulped. "He told you to go home?" he whimpered.

"Yes, he did," she said. "Right after he told you to go home." She paused. "He's very scary."

Toby blinked. "So are you."

"I am?" she asked, tilting her head to the side.

Toby nodded. "Part of Yafya's deal didn't involve straight As," he muttered.

"Yeah, well before I met you, I didn't have being rude to the Beastar at my first meeting on my how do I fix that list, did I?" she shot at him with a smile.

His little tail wagged slightly next to him on the chair. "No," he said with a shrug. "I guess you didn't."


	9. Chapter 9

"Auntie Sabine!"

Sabine's legs were crushed with little children as she entered the child care center. She laughed, ruffling heads and squeezing hands, being unable to bend down due to the basket on her chest. The teacher laughed and waded through the throng of little ones. "Let her get in," she admonished, reaching for the basket and Sabine unfastened it. "Oh, he's getting so big!"

"I know!" Sabine agreed. "I wish he would learn how to sleep."

"Are you taking another nap?" one of the children asked.

"Not today," she said, with a smile. "Today I am going to do art with some of you. But I need to speak with Sensei first." She turned her attention to the roe deer, making sure the door was secure behind her so no little beasts escaped without their notice. "How's my little patient doing?" she asked quietly.

"Same," the roe deer answered. "He's good most of the time. Occasionally has those terrible outbreaks." She shook her head. "I have a few more drawings for you that might help, but maybe you can get more out of him. He seems to have made a connection with someone who comes and volunteers here, though."

"Oh?" Sabine raised her ears in interest, her eyes going to the little zebra-canine hybrid boy about whom they were speaking.

"Yeah, an older komodo dragon gentleman that comes to read and work with the kids. He's really good with all of them. But Sota really brightens up when he comes in."

"Good," Sabine said in a satisfied voice. "He needs some positive male influence in his life. Can you eavesdrop on them and see if he says anything that might help?"

The roe deer nodded. "You really think that he was-"

"Pray every morning before you start school that I am wrong," Sabine interrupted her. "I do." She turned her eyes back to the teacher. "But if I'm not, and I find the son of bitch that tried to predate him, I'm going to kill him in a very ugly manner."

She blinked slowly. "If his grandparents don't get the predator first," she replied.

"They'll call me for back up," Sabine told her.

The roe deer nodded in agreement.

Sabine took a deep breath, today was not a day for her to get angry. She need to stay calm, and she could feel the fur on her neck and at the base of her tail begin to rise.

"Are we going to color again today?" Sota asked, frowning as he came up to her.

"Would you like to paint instead?" she asked, bending down and picking him up. "Or play with play dough?"

"Play dough," he said grumpily.

"I didn't get a kiss from you today," she replied just as grumpily. "Do I have to tell on you to your grandmother."

Sota laughed loudly, threw his arms around Sabine's neck, and kissed her loudly on the lips. "I love you, Auntie Sabine."

"Not as much as I love you," she said back. "Play dough it is."

She carried him over to a table and set up the play dough, several other children coming to join them as they began to sculpt things out of it. "Here is me," Sabine said as she made little figures. "And my very best friend in the whole wide world," she pointed a figure that looked very much like a zebra.

"My grandma!" Sota shouted.

"That's right," Sabine laughed. "And here is your grandpa," she pointed to a donkey figure. "And who else was at our last party?"

"Your kids," Sota said. "And my mom."

"Who else?" she asked, as she made small likenesses of them.

"Uncle Viggo and Auntie Mira," he said.

"That's right," she made clay figures of the komodo dragon-aligator hybrid couple.

"And Uncle Tycho and his family."

Sabine made figures of Viggo's brother and his family. "Anyone else?"

Sota shook his head. "Nope," he said. "Just us." He leaned in and whispered loudly. "Talking about business."

"We don't talk business in school," Sabine said seriously. She sighed heavily, repositioning herself on the floor. "You know what I have to do when I'm done after this, Sota," she said, taking him into her arms. "I have go apologize to someone."

"You do?" he asked. "Why?"

"Because I was too big for my britches," she said, reaching for a piece of play dough and manipulating it between her fingers.

"Sabine-san was too big for her britches?" the teacher teased. "I don't believe it."

"Oh, believe it," Sabine moaned dramatically. "Now I have to go the police station and apologize and hope that my apology is accepted."

"You have to apologize to the police?" Sota asked. "Did you get arrested?"

"Luckily," she snuggled him, "no. But I can tell you, I don't like it."

"I don't think I've heard you say you're sorry, Sabine-san," the teacher said.

"Because I don't say it often," she answered. "Because I am rarely wrong." She winked at Sota.

"But you were wrong this time?" the boy asked.

She stroked his striped ears, nodding. "I was disrespectful to someone whom I should not have been," she said. "And I need to make it right." She repositioned him in her lap, so she could look into his face easier. "That's part of my job, to help make this wrong that are right. Both out there," she motioned vaguely toward the door to the daycare, "and with you."

"Because Grandma is your best friend?" Sota asked.

"Because I love you," Sabine whispered. "And I don't want anything bad to happen to you. Or anyone here. Ever." Even as she said the words, her throat tightened. There was no way she could keep Sota safe. She couldn't keep any of these children safe. She had learned that a long time ago, but it didn't lessen her desire to do so.

Sota looked back at the little gathering of clay characters that Sabine had made and took the playdough from her fingers. "That's all that was at the party, Auntie Sabine," he said.

**OoOoOo**

**A/N: Did you know illusionna has a twitter account? She does? Come join follow her at illusionna2 **


	10. Chapter 10

Sabine had a mixed relationship with the police of the city. She'd been on both sides of the bars numerous times, but was the first time she'd been in the building pretending to go somewhere else. It had been a long, hard week waiting for Toby to make his decision on whether he wanted to talk to her or not, but he had made the decision to do so. At least enough so that she could find The Sublime Beastar to apologize to him. Apparently, the idea of her doing so tickled the young canine enough for him to part with that information.

She nodded to a Saint Bernard she was all too familiar with, and not in a good way. "Inspector," she nodded politely to him.

"Counselor," he nodded back, his voice gruff. "Do you have business in the building?"

"I do," she said, heading toward the elevator, "thank you, sir." She pressed the call button a little harder than was necessary.

He grunted and walked by her just as the elevator door opened. She quickly walked in, pressing the door closed button, hoping that for once being a trouble-causing hybrid would work in her favor and no one would want to ride the elevator with her.

When the door closed, her anxiety didn't lessen, but grew as pressed the four digit code in the key pad that Toby had given her. When the elevator began to move, her bladder jumped, her ears flattened to her head and her tail dropped to straight down. She looked to the security camera in the elevator and smiled at it and waved, then smoothed her pencil skirt before the door opened up. The click from her heels echoed as she stepped out of the elevator onto the top level of the police building, into a small room that wasn't much larger than the elevator itself, leading to another door. Only this door was a heavy, ornate wood, carved with intricate designs of lotus and cherry blossoms and different beasts and scenes depicted on it. The elevator door closed with a whoosh. Turning quickly at the noise she realized there was not a call button on this end.

She was trapped.

_I'm not trapped,_ she told herself, turning back toward the carved door, a stark contrast to the plain metal of the elevator. _I'm visiting someone._ _And I'm most likely expected, since Toby's code worked._ She wasn't sure if she liked that or not.

She smoothed her skirt again, took a deep breath, and knocked on the door.

And waited.

And waited some more.

Her ears, which had been drooping slowly began to rise in ire as she waited. She licked her lips and knocked on the door again. _Don't tell me no one is home,_ she thought. How was she going get back down if no one was here?

She raised her hand to knock again, but her knuckles didn't make contact as the door opened. She looked up, expecting to see a horse opening the door, but the air above her was empty. Her cheeks began to burn as she realized that someone else had obviously opened the door, and looking down, she saw that it was a rat, dressed in a butler's outfit.

"Hello," she said, her voice sounding much more nervous than she would have liked. "I don't have an appointment, but-"

"Come in, please," the rat said, moving over the side smoothly, gesturing for her to enter the space. She stepped into the foyer of what looked to be a huge apartment, and the rat closed the door behind her.

"I'm-" she began.

"We know who you are," the rat did not allow her to finish, but somehow his interruption didn't seem like one.

_Of course, you do,_ she thought, smoothing her skirt again.

"Wait here, please," the rat said, before walking off.

_Get a grip, Sabi,_ she told herself, resisting the urge to smooth her skirt again. They were using scare tactics on her, the same tactics that she used on other people. _They're the same tactics you use on people to scare them._ But she wasn't the Sublime Beastar. She was being intimated by the Sublime Beastar. No, she was being intimated by the Sublime Beastar's rat butler! She blinked, her tail beginning to wag at the thought, and she giggled. She was in the Sublime Beastar's personal apartment being intimated by his butler! Never, in a million years, did she ever think she would ever be in this position. She thought back to her youth and the many people who teased her about being 'the ghetto beastar.' _Take that!_ she thought, laughing immaturely. _You're never going to be in Yafya the Black Devil's foyer._

She placed her hands behind her back and decided to take in her surroundings. The entry space was partially cut off from the rest of the apartment, with a traditional place for shoes, and blocking off the view from the rest of the space. It was decorated with an ornate mural, the heavy weight of the material fastened to the wall with large brackets. Walking over to it, her tail wagging, ears forward, she examined it, recognizing it as a piece carved from stone from the sea that bordered the city. The claws of a crab or lobster had created the beautiful picture of the wharf of the city, complete with crests of water at the top, seaweed under the sea flowing the portrayed waves that Sabine imagined would mimic a breeze on land. She was familiar with the places it depicted, having spent much of her life close by there, and seeing it made her feel a wash of pleasant homesickness. While she did not recognize the name of the artist, written in seaspeak glyphs, she did recognize the name of their underwater city, which lay just about hundred kilometers out in the ocean and to which the wharf was one of their main trading ports. The artist must have been very skilled, she noted. The thing must have cost a small fortune. Her clawed finger traveling above the glyph that was his name. _Tsumegaka,_ she sounded it out.

"I had that commissioned." Sabine flipped around, the deep voice frightening her out of her reverey. She hadn't heard him approach, _And a beast that big shouldn't be that quiet,_ she thought. The feeling of homesickness began to turn into dread when she saw him, as if she were turning to see some demon staring at her. Yafya was wearing a pale blue t-shirt, but instead of the skinny jeans he wore when on their first meeting, he donned a pair of khaki's, held up with a thick belt to accentuate the 'casual business' look. He was in his stocking feet, and his stance was one of nonchalant boredom. His mane was tied back at his neck, and his eyes were blindfolded.

_That's a new intimidation technique,_ she noted. She also noted it worked. Where was she supposed to look? He was acting like he could see her, but why would he wear a blindfold if he could see through it? Did she look where his eyes were supposed to be? At his nose? His ears? The mural? Her voice threatened to catch in her throat.

"It's beautiful," she replied, deciding to look at the blindfold as if it wasn't there. "It was carved by a crustacean. Out of bedrock. By Tsumegaka."

He tilted his head to the side, his ears drawing to the side in surprise. "You know seaspeak?"

"I grew up in the ghetto," she replied, his assumption that she wouldn't know it rankling her. "I'm fluent." There were few who grew up near the wharf in her generation who weren't.

His drew back all the way, as if he heard a sound behind him, though Sabine heard nothing. For a long moment there was silence between them, he regarding her through he blindfold, like he hadn't expected that to be her response. He then put his hands in his pockets, and chuckled slightly through his nose, his nostrils flaring as he did. For some reason, that annoyed her, too.

"It took you two weeks to get here," he said finally, breaking the silence. "I was expecting you sooner than that."


	11. Chapter 11

"It looks like our boy Toby is a stronger nut that either of us figured," Sabine said, looking away from Yafya's face for the first time and digging in her purse. She took out the flip phone that the dog had given her. "Took me a while to get the information out of him to find you."

The corners of Yafya's mouth turned upward slightly, and Sabine could not tell if it was in derision or amusement. The blindfold didn't help matters any.

"His counsel has suggested that he not be involved in matters involving illegality, even if he has your backing," Sabine continued, holding the phone out to the horse. "His counsel also suggested he not share any details of anything with anyone, which is why it took me a week to get here."

"He didn't share with you?" Yafya asked.

"No," Sabine admitted. "He shared his phone and the code on the elevator. That's it. That, and part of your deal with him didn't involve him getting straight As." She still held out the phone.

He made no move take it. "Straight As?" the horse repeated, tilting his head sideways. He was acting like he could see her through the blindfold, which couldn't be possible, and she was finding it increasingly irritating to have to look at a white cloth and not a pair of eyeballs.

"That was part of my deal with him," she said. "I'm his therapist now."

"Oh," Yafya drawled, cocking his hip to the side, the sides of his mouth still curved upward. "He's been traumatized by his fight with the foxes and needs therapy?"

It took Sabine a moment to answer. She wanted to say he was trying to be funny, but she wasn't sure. She was a good read of people, it was part of her job, but she was having a tough time reading him. The longer they talked, the less the blindfold seemed an intimidation tactic and just plain weird. His body movements weren't intimating, but he wasn't welcoming her into his apartment, either. If fact, the two of them were still standing in his foyer. "No," she said finally. "I'm his therapist in case he goes to court and needs a professional witness."

"You can confirm he's not crazy," Yafya nodded, bringing his hand to his chin.

Again, she couldn't tell if he was joking or not. "Something like that." She paused. "He's a smart kid. So part of _my_ deal is that he get straight As and he goes to university. He will need some tutoring to catch up, but once he does, he'll be fine. He's a smart kid," she repeated.

"And how is Toby going to pay for university?" Yafya asked, looking away from her, or he would have were he not wearing the blindfold, toward the mural attached to the wall.

Sabine's chest tightened and she lowered her arm, still holding the phone. "We haven't gotten to that part yet."

"His mother is going to pay for him?" Yafya asked. "She's a meat addict who spends all of the little bit of money she has as soon as it hits her pocket." He turned back to her, the smile on his lips gone. "Or maybe his father? He's been out of the picture since Toby was two, even the police don't know where he is. He's most likely dead."

Sabine pursed her lips together and made a concerted effort not to raise her hackles.

"Or maybe he'll get scholarships. No, I don't think so, the deadline for most of that has past, since he's in last year of school, and has a criminal record," Yafya went on, shoving his hands deep in his slack's pockets. "So what a wonderful thing you're doing, Sabine the caribou-red wolf, putting such ideas in the boy's head. He's sure to find success in that."

She found it hard to swallow the lump in her throat and found her hand clutching Toby's phone. Yafya had already told her more about the jack russell in a few seconds than she'd been able to glean from him in two weeks. What kind of therapist did that make her? She did a body check, to make sure her ears were still forward, her fur wasn't raised, despite her raised heartbeat, that her tail wasn't tucked, but strait out behind her, as relaxed as she could make it with as angry and ashamed as she was.

"He now has one of the best lawyers in the city to help him with his criminal record," she said in a firm voice, glad that it was not shaking like her emotions were. "He also has a therapist and cheerleader who is a political activist that happens to be very good a raising money for causes, and many people would find educating an underprivileged and reformed canine from a bad part of town as a very worthy cause. The fact that both the lawyer and the activist are owed favors by quite a few people can help in that regard also." She dealt with politicians all the time, she was good at dealing out verbal manure.

"And you would be making sure he continues with his straight As for the next years while he is in university?" Yafya's deep voice dripped with doubt.

"You underestimate my tenacity, sir," she replied with a haughty air.

The horse straightened his shoulders, throwing his head slightly so that his mane settled behind them. "I would imagine that is almost impossible to do," he said, as if stating that the sky were blue.

Sabine blinked, her own shoulders dropping from confusion. Had he insulted her. Or had he just given her a….compliment? She took a deep breath, remembering the phone in her hand. Why was she arguing with The Sublime Beastar? This was what she'd been told was her problem all of her life, her flippancy for authority, her refusal to see an hierarchy in anything. Her demanding that all people be equal.

This male wasn't the Beastar because he was equal. He was the Sublime Beastar because he _better. _He was better than every other beast at everything. The way he moved was unnatural, like the wind had inhabited the body of a horse and was trying to be a horse, but couldn't quite pull it off. The aura that he emitted was like a lightening that stuffed itself into box, wanting to blast its way out, but unable to do so. He looked like an ancient statue carved out of stone that had come to life, huge and powerful and preternaturally beautiful. There was a reason why this male was the Sublime Beastar. It was not because he was ordinary. It was not even because he was only level of special that she was. He was on a level all to himself. She needed to remember that.

She held the phone out to him once again, her attitude one of contrition, her ears and tail down. "I came here to apologize for ruining your mission," she said. She thought she saw him start slightly, but she must have imagined it, just like she must be misinterpreting his ears straight up and swiveled toward her. "I thought that Toby was just a kid doing something to join a gang to prove himself or something. I didn't know it was important." She was afraid she sounded like she was whining, and paused, swallowing. That lump hadn't left her throat yet. "I wanted to return his phone, and try to help to make up for it in some way." She paused yet again. "I do that kind of thing, sometimes."

Yafya chuckled, crossing his arms in front of his chest. The sound sent chills down her spine, reminding her of a story of a demon about to eat a baby. "Do you now?"

She shrugged, wagging her tail slightly. "Only every now and then," she replied. "I have to do something to keep my nose dirty, after all."


	12. Chapter 12

Yafya seemed to be looking at her through the blindfold, his arms still folded across his chest, as if he were considering what she said. "You said Toby hadn't told you anything," he finally broke the silence.

She shook her head. "No," she confessed. "And Samayuara will not tell me anything, either. Client/counselor confidentiality."

"That's good to know," Yafya muttered. "How do you know you want to help if you don't know what it was about?" He put his hands back in his pockets.

She wished he take the dumb blindfold off. "I know I can help more than a 17 year old boy can, no matter what it is," she replied. "And I may have some connections that Toby the jack russell, or you, don't." His body language softened, and Sabine felt a stab of satisfaction that she'd finally been able to make a hit in this entire conversation. "It doesn't happen to have anything to do with hybrid children being sold for food, does it?"

Yafya froze, the first herbivore-ish action he had taken since she'd seen him, and stuck a thumb in the blindfold, bringing it up to show one of his large, dark brown eyes. He turned his head to look at her, another act of an herbivore that brought her a great deal of relief for some reason, despite the fact it was a move that indicated anxiety. "No!" he said vehemently, ripping the blindfold off and turning to look at her head on.

It was Sabine's turn to freeze. The brief relief fled from her like a deer before a predator. She felt her eyes go wide and her tail tuck between her legs and her heart jumped into her chest.

"What are you talking about?" he asked, bending forward and taking a step toward her. Her ears plastered to her head, as if he was accusing her of doing the heinous act about which she was asking.

"You—you don't know?" she managed to stammer out, stopping herself from taking a physical step backward. Speaking seemed to snap her out of the death freeze she'd trapped herself in. She shook her head, righting her ears and put both of her hands up, as if she were pushing the horse away from her. As she made the movement, she would swear she felt a physical barrier pressing against her palms, even though there was many feet of space still between she and Yafya. "No!" she said, a little louder than she meant to. "I misspoke, I don't know if they're food or not."

He stopped his forward assault, straightening. His nostrils flared and he huffed in a very equine way.

With reindeer being closely enough related to horses, she mimicked the gesture out of instinct, slightly surprised she did. _Calm down,_ she sang in her mind, _calm down, calm down. _He stared at her intensely for a moment longer, the dark, large brown eyes seeming to looking for something she was unable to identify.

Then, the awfulness was gone. Like a wave that crashed on the shore and then retreated back the sea, it was the same horse who had told her he had commissioned the mural, who had his hands stuffed deep in his pockets, who had smiled at her words. "Come inside," he said. "We obviously have to talk." He turned without waiting for her to answer, and without taking Toby's phone, and strode deeper into his apartment.

Slipping off her shoes, disappointed that she lost the several inches of height by losing the heels, she followed him. Her eyes immediately fell on a coffee table, filled with official looking papers spread out on it, which were being gathered by several rats and shoved into manila folders. She smiled despite herself at the thought, _The Sublime Beastar has to do paperwork._ For some reason, that ordinary task seemed rather silly for him to engage in. It was one of her least favorite things about her own job, but one of the necessary evils of running any business, legal or not. She felt her tail wag behind her, as if it had a life of its own, which it often did, and then raised her eyes to take in the rest of the room.

She gasped.

The exterior walls were was floor to ceiling windows. The bright blue sky pressed against them. Flying birds soared on thermals, some by themselves, some with other animals on them, taxiing them throughout the city. Sunlight twinkled off of windows from skyscrapers, businesses and apartments decorations coloring the light with their accouterments inside. Beasts walking on the street below looked like tiny ants, the cars nothing more than beetles.

She glanced toward Yafya, and saw him regarding her. His face had softened, a small, proud smile on his face.

"You can see the entire city from up here!" she exclaimed, suddenly aware of how silly she sounded and must have looked with her tail behind her. She broke eye contact with him and back out to the windows, feeling herself blush. "That sounded like an awestruck fawn," she groaned, her tail going still.

With the small smile still on his face, he gestured to the couch in front of the coffee table. "Sit," he commanded. She perched herself on the far edge of the couch, sitting on her tail in case it decided to betray her in some way again by either wagging, or worse, puffing out or curling in between her legs. At least trapped under her it was hidden. A wine bottle and two glasses were brought to the table by a group of rats. Yafya uncorked it and poured a bright orange liquid into the wine glasses handing one to Sabine before sitting at the other end of the couch from her. "What are you talking about," he repeated.

Sabine's mouth went dry again, her hands tightening over the wine glass and Toby's phone in her hands. "What were you having Toby do for you?" she asked quickly, before she had time to think, relaxing her grip on his phone before she broke it. "What was he involved in so deeply that he had the Sublime Beastar send him into do his dirty work?"

Yafya's nostril's flared and he took a small, slow sip of the orange liquid in his wine glass, the smile gone. "You just can't help yourself, can you?" he asked. He voice didn't seem to hold any malice in it, though his eyes did.

"I beg your pardon?" Sabine asked, glad she was sitting on her tail, so that she only had to make sure her ears were acting properly, pointing forward as if in attention.

"You can't help but assume that people in power are using those who are not in some subversive, abusive way for their own devices," he said, leaning backward, regarding her.

"That isn't true!" she exclaimed, still gripping both the phone and glass.

"Then why are you assuming that I had bad intentions on asking Toby to help me?" he asked, again his voice not matching the look on his face.

Sabine could feel her heart beating in her throat, light a trapped herbivore before the teeth of a meat eater. Why was she assuming that he had bad intentions? Was it because of the feeling that he gave off? Because Toby wouldn't tell her anything about it? Because she was being too arrogant to think that anyone could want to help others? She recalled what she'd told Sota at preschool and took a slow breath in. What was the matter with her?

"I'm used to people in power abusing it," she said, knowing the excuse sounded exactly like it was—an excuse. "I'm a political activist. I don't associate with the good people." She felt her ears droop. _Damn treasonous wolf body, letting all my feelings show. Herbivores have it so easy, they can hide what they're feeling so well…._She took a sip of her orange liquid in an attempt to get her mind off of her body.

If orange liquids could sing, the fluid in the wine glass would have. The flavor of rich, sweet carrot exploded in Sabine's mouth, almost like an aqueous fruit candy, but with a refreshing edge that sucrose could never give. She held the glass away from her and eyed it in wonder. "This is the best carrot juice I've ever tasted in my life!" she exclaimed, again her voice sounding like an awestruck fawn.

When she turned to look at Yafya, he was smiling at her, but the undertone of it was the same as when they were in alley and he'd told her that he preferred to let people like her get her nose dirty, so that the feeling of wonder at the deliciousness of the carrot juice was replaced by one of unease. "You think so?" he asked, his voice sounded genuinely pleased, though. "I grow the carrots myself."

She blinked. She must imagining maliciousness in his face. What was the matter with her? "You do?" she asked, looking again at the glass. "This is really amazing. You must grow magic carrots." She took a long swig of the juice.

His smile was bright as she drank. "I'm good at growing carrots," he said.


	13. Chapter 13

"I can't grow anything," Sabine admitted with a little bit of disappointment. "Well, no, that's not entirely true. I grew two fawns...and a few shock chicks." When Yafya raised his eyebrows at her, she added quickly, "But that's not really the same thing." She took another drink of carrot juice. "You grow really good carrots," she said, fumbling for something to say and feeling rather foolish.

"Hybrid children being eaten," he reminded her. His voice was gentle like when spoke about the mural in the foyer, and took her completely by surprise,

She felt like her brain was in some sort of fog, trying to process too much information at once. Yafya's demeanor kept changing, or his tone of voice was telling her one telling thing, his words were telling her something else, and his body language something else entirely. It was like trying to add 2+2+2=7, but she couldn't figure out how to get it equal anything else, even though she quite positive 7 was not the right answer.

She emptied the wine glass of juice to give herself time to think, and then put the glass on the coffee table. She was aware he watched her intently the entire time, a stark contrast from wearing the blindfold of moments before. With Toby's phone still in her hand, she placed it in her lap and took a deep breath, looking Yafya in the eye. _Don't be intimidated,_ she told herself. _He's a beast, like any other beast. He's just The Beastar. But he's still a beast._

"I don't know if they're being eaten," she admitted. "I'm assuming that. They're going missing. Quietly."

"People can go missing quietly on their own," Yafya replied.

Anger burst forth from Sabine's chest and engulfed her entire body like an exploding star, starting at hear sternum and exploding from the hairs on her shoulders and back. She felt her long shackles rise and her tail bush out beneath her, and imagined she probably looked like she was about the pop with static electricity. The urge to turn up her lips was incredible, and keeping them clamped down made the sensation cause tears to form her eyes.

This, this is what she had been dealing with her entire life, since she was born to parents were who were not of the same species. The casual dismissal that they didn't even know they held. Yafya tilted her head at her physical reaction, but did not tilt away from her, nor change the way he regarded her. "If they had been pure bred children," she said, her voice shaking, "when they police were called, they would come and do a proper investigation. A child alert would go out to try and find them. The media would post their photograph to see if they were seen anywhere. Parents would be notified to keep their children close at hand, because in such and such neighborhood a predator was aiming for such and such children. But that isn't what happens." She stopped and took a deep breath, trying to keep the rest of her body from shaking along with her voice. "The police come and tell the parents that perhaps their little one went off on their own. Perhaps their three year old wandered down the street when they weren't paying attention. Perhaps their seven year old is a friend's house. Perhaps the parents should keep a better eye on their kids in the future, so something like this doesn't happen to their other little ones." She leaned forward and blinked hard, her large eyes ready to overspill with tears. "Then the police go home, and that child is never heard from again." She leaned forward toward him, her hand clutching the phone in her lap. "Do you know why that is?" she asked.

Yafya looked at her, his head still titled, his body had not shifted at all during her tirade, as if he were made of stone.

"Because that child is a hybrid, and a hybrid isn't really a person, so they aren't worth the trouble of an investigation," Sabine answered for him. "And people can go missing quietly on their own."

Speeches were something Sabine was good at, she'd always been good at them. And with these kinds of speeches, she usually got one of two responses, a stony silence or a return tirade. Yafya, the Sublime Beastar, kept his large, brown eyes on hers, reached over and took her empty wine glass from the other side of the table. In doing so, he leaned so that his face was very close to hers, their nostrils lining up as she stayed still, trying not to cry or to scream or to growl. She resisted the urge to puff into his nose, a thoroughly ungulate/equine thing to do as a show of anger or dominance. His own breath was slow and steady as his long arm reached across the table and took her wine glass before he sat back up and filled it with more carrot juice, the dark orange liquid swirling like a whirlpool along the sides of the glass. He held it out it out to her, his fingers, preternaturally long wrapped along the stem, seemed only to barely prop the glass up, not really hold it in place in his grasp.

"And people can be led away by predators," Yafya said, his low voice almost sounding as if it came from his chest rather than his mouth, moving the glass of carrot juice toward her in an urge for her to take it.

She blinked, and for a moment, she didn't see the glass in his hands, or the opulent apartment, but instead was surrounded by the press of beasts as they walked the streets in the summer heat many, many years ago.

_Samayueru rolled his glass marbles over the chalked board that they had drawn on the sidewalk, the heat of the rare sweltering summer almost threatening to liquify the sticks as they drew. He knocked one of Viggo's marbles out of the intricate set of circles and laughed, snatching it up in his small hand and tucking it in his marble bag._

"_You're going to make me go broke," Viggo shook his head angrily, his little milk teeth like needles in his long face. While his eyes and cheeks were shaped like that of a komodo dragon, his muzzle was too long and pointed and belied the alligator ancestry in his blood. He shook a long taloned finger at the wolf-caribou hybrid across from him. "Don't make me have to tell my wife that I've gambled away her spending money."_

_Sabine, her head smooth and her body small and lanky like that of a wolf cub put her hands on her narrow child hips and shook her head, mimicking the games that their parents played every night off. "Are you gambling away my spending money, Viggo?" she called from next to him, shoving him gently on the shoulder. "You said you would buy me a new bicycle."_

"_I'll buy you a bicycle with a bell on it and tassels," Viggo told her, nodding sagely, waving to Samayueru to make another roll of his marbles. _

"_I don't think so," Samayueru said, his own smooth head also wolf-like. He looked to Rina, a eagle-vulture-crow hybrid and waggled his eyebrows. "What shall I buy you with all of Viggo's money?"_

"_I want a two seater bicycle," she said, her beautiful black and brown feathers shimmering in the sunlight the same way the hair shimmered in the heat. "Then we can cruise around and wave to all the neighbors."_

_Samayueru put his arm around her shoulders. "Anything you want, honey," he said, then knocked another one of Viggo's marbles out of the circle._

"_Are we gonna have to gather up a posse and beat him up to get your money back?" Tycho asked Viggo with a sigh. It was obvious he and Viggo were brother's even their scale pattern was the same. _

_Rina cackled and raised the feathers on her neck, waving her head back and forth. "Not if we're riding away on our two seater bike," she said._

"_You seem like a strong set of boys." A jaguar that none of them recognized walked over to them, his eyes on Viggo and Tycho. Of the five of them, they were by far the biggest with their komodo dragon/alligator build. The jaguar was dressed in business attire, not entirely out of place on the wharf where they were, but not the most common of dress either in the working class neighborhood. "I have something that I have trouble lifting, would you mind helping me?"_

_There was nothing wrong with the beast in front of them. He looked presentable. He smelled clean. His eyes were bright and straight. His tone of voice was congenial and what he asked was not unreasonable, especially being so close to the shipyards. But for some reason, as soon as the words left his mouth, the hair on Sabine's back, from the tip of her tail to the top of her head stood straight on end, and she did something that she had never done in the entire six years of her little life. She lifted her upper lip as far as it would go, opened her mouth, and from as far back in her throat as she could make it come from, she growled at the jaguar bending down and smiling at her two friends._

_All of them turned and looked at her, shocked, and for a split second, the only sound was the rumble from the back of Sabine's throat. Then, in the blink of an eye, the jaguar was standing up, and Rina's grandmother Washi had swept Sabine up in her arms, swatted her hard on her muzzle, and gasped. _

"_Sabine!" she admonished. "We do not do that! Ever!" The eagle female turned to the jaguar and looked at him apologetically. "I am so sorry," she said. _

_The jaguar raised his hands, smiling and laughed nervously. "Oh, no harm done," he assured her, backing away. "They're young, I am sure I just startled them." All five of them clustered around Grandma Washi's skirt, and as Grandpa Hagetaka walked over from the magazine booth they had both been manning on the other side of the sidewalk, his vulture head pressed forward examining the jaguar harshly, the jaguar laughed again. "I was just watching them play," he said. "I'll be on my way."_

_As he walked off, Grandma Washi turned her attention back to Sabine and smacked her nose again. "We never, ever, ever bare our fangs at anyone, do you hear me young lady?"_

_Sabine burst into tears and nodded her head._

"_Did he touch any of you?" Grandpa Hagetaka asked, his eyes sweeping over the group of children._

"_No," Viggo said quickly._

"_He felt slimy," Rina said at the same time. "The way over cooked noodles feel."_

_Grandma Washi's eyes went wide and she regarded Sabine again. "Stop your tears now," she said in a soft voice, kissing Sabine on the muzzle with her beak where she's slapped her. "What's done is done. We never bear our fangs. Next time you get a grown up, That's what the grown ups are for. You understand?"_

_All of them nodded, and Sabine, tears still streaming down her muzzle, had put her head on the old eagle's shoulder and let herself be comforted as the adrenaline from the encounter left her little body. "I'm sure you're exhausted after that display," Grandma Washi said with a small laugh. "Let's not try to repeat that."_


	14. Chapter 14

Sabine took the glass from Yafya's hand, despite the fact that his fingers took up all the space, they didn't touch when she reached for it. They were very black against the orange of the liquid, impossibly long and delicate, like a piano player's. "Thank you," she said, blinking rapidly to dispel the memory that had come upon her unbidden. It had been a very long time since she'd thought about that day, and when she did, she often wondered what set her off. None of them had ever discussed it again, and in examining it in her mind, she was quite sure she had never been in danger. The jaguar was after Viggo and Tycho, not her, Samayueru, or Rina. She drank from the wine glass, the rich, sweet taste of the carrot juice bringing her fully back to the present. "This is magnificent carrot juice," she couldn't help but say.

The smile was back on Yafya's face. He was beautiful. Awful, frightening, comforting, and beautiful. Sabine was sure if she liked the feeling or if she didn't. "I grow good carrots," he assured her.

"You do," she concurred. "Really good carrots." She regarded the glass and gathered her thoughts. She was grateful he allowed her silence in which to do it. "Where do you get your information from?" she asked finally. "For what you with the city?"

He looked at her the way she looked at the glass, as if gathering thoughts that might have been somewhere else. "From the police department, mainly," he replied. "And those they interact with."

She laughed, knowing what that was code for. "That makes sense," she said, gesturing the building below them, since it was the police station. "But criminals don't always tell the police everything."

"I am allowed...interventions that the police are not," Yafya admitted.

For some reason, that made her feel relieved, as if he'd divulged a secret to her in confidence. It wasn't she knew. He was The Sublime Beastar. Anyone with a brain in their head knew he could do what he wanted. But he made it feel that way. She remembered Samayueru's comment about Yafya's breakfast toast. "I am sure that comes in handy," she said in a voice that broached no judgment. Her own methods could hardly be called gentle, or even humane. She had no problem with gathering information from a criminal in whatever means needed to be used. "I don't know what is happening to the kids being disappeared," she admitted, coming back to his original question. "Only that they are going missing, and they are being lead away by individuals, because we have managed to intercept a few of them."

"We?" Yafya raised his eyes again.

Again, her heart thumped hard in her chest, fear threatening to take a hold of her. "I am sure you've done your research on me," she said in a flat voice.

He chuckled. "The dark side of activism," he rumbled.

"Says the vigilante," she replied.

"Someone has to get their nose dirty," he reminded her, taking a sip of his own carrot juice.

"And I'm one of the chosen ones," she raised her glass to his before taking her own sip.

"If you've intercepted these individuals, why do you not know more?" he asked her.

Her ears drooped. "We've intercepted some the leading them away. We haven't captured anyone. They know what they're doing, and they'd rather commit suicide than be caught by any of us." She looked away from him out toward one of the large windows.

"Any beast in their right mind would rather commit suicide than be caught by one of you," he said matter-of-factly.

She turned back to him, surprised, not only at the statement, but at the lack of condemnation in his voice. "So if you get your information from the police," she said with a shrug, "it stands to reason why you wouldn't know about this."

He nodded reluctantly and looked away from her, a thoughtful look in his eyes. "Toby was helping me with an ivory trade ring," he said slowly.

Sabine's stomach lurched as the meaning of the words penetrated her brain. "Coming through the city?" she asked.

The horse shook his head, the few stray strands of his black mane shaking slightly as he did. "Coming _from_ the city."

She gasped. "I haven't heard anything about an ivory trade in the city," she said. "Anywhere." Granted, she didn't have her ears to the ground like she used to, but something like that was big news.

"It's something that's been very underground," he said. "The police found out about it quite by accident. It isn't even going through the Back Alley Market."

"It isn't going through the Wharf either, or I would have heard something," she said.

He nodded in agreement.

"I doubt foxes would have had something to do in moving ivory, though," Sabine ventured. "They usually deal with information rather than goods."

Yafya gave her an incredulous look.

She cringed. "Oh, the drive. I'm guessing they had information on who was moving it?"

"They may have had information," Yafya admitted, putting his empty wine glass on the table. "I'm going to guess they did with the force they went after Toby with. Whether that would have led to anything, who knows."

"I'm very sorry about that," Sabine said in a quiet voice. She didn't apologize often, she didn't have to. She wasn't wrong often. But when she was, she seemed to mess up with the best of them. At least she would get to brag she messed up with the actual best of them. "I can help," she put her own empty wine glass on the table. "I have contacts in all kinds of places in the city. I can have an ear out, now that I know what to listen for. If you give me the information you have, I can help more than a school boy." _Damn Sabi, you don't sound much better than a school boy,_ she thought.

Yafya blinked slowly, and when he did, Sabine was caught at how large and lovely his eyes were...how large and lovely all of him was. He was really was like an otherworldly being, something that didn't belong on the physical plane, but rather in a painting or carved in stone, in a temple for people to worship and fear. The silence between them seemed to go on for too long, and she wanted to fill it with words, but knew that wasn't her place to do so, she she simply sat and looked at him, willing her ears to stay upright and her breathing to stay steady.

"We have very little information to go on," he said finally. "It's an ivory ring, so a carnivore leadership, underground meat sales on the side, elephant and rhinoceros victims..."

"Standard stuff," Sabine agreed. "No neighborhoods where the victims are coming from?"

He shook his head. "They go missing," he admitted. His body language showed slight defeat, his ears flattening slightly to the sides. "Sometimes they are missing for weeks before they reported."

"How is that possible?" she asked, her own ears swiveling toward him.

"Most of the individuals are loners, despite being herd animals," he said. "So their loved ones are not immediately alerted when they are gone."

Sabine felt her ears swivel back in thought as she broke eyes contact with the Sublime Beastar, nodding professionally. "I'll think on that," she told him, returning eye contact, "and keep my ears open."

He nodded and smiled the small smile that he had at when he'd met at the foyer and told her about the sea mural. "I would appreciate that."

For some reason, the words made her mind go blank, and she could think of nothing of which to answer him. She blinked a few times, trying to gather her thoughts, and then felt the phone in her lap. She held it out to him, "Toby's phone."

He shook his head. "You keep it," he told her. "One will connect to my home number and two will connect to my mobile. Nine will connect to the police. Call me if you find anything out."

She held it out a moment longer, as if he hadn't said anything, and then slowly brought it back to her lap. She consciously kept herself from smiling as she felt her tail wag beneath her thighs. "I will," she said. Then, after a moment, she cringed again. "Um, I don't mean to be rude, but…how do I get back downstairs?"


	15. Chapter 15

The Sublime Beastar placed the blindfold back over his eyes as he waited for the police officer that had escorted Sabine out to come back with the information he asked for. He let out a deep sigh as he picked up the file that the rats quickly put back together when Sabine the caribou-red wolf had come into his living space. It was filled with useless papers, filled with useless facts, a so-called dossier on _her._ He could have found out more about her from a scandal rag.

It told her height and weight, identifying marks, where she went to school, when she graduated. It had her arrest record, her prison record, her court declaration of 'guilty-time served'. It had the paperwork she had put in speak in front of the Beastars counsel many times in her life, all of them in order to speak to change the law into some thing more equal, some of them declined, most of them accepted, and most of them signed off by Thalia the Tigress. A petition for her birth certificate was present, along with legal papers that we was, indeed, a legal entity and deserved such a certificate, despite the fact that was dated two four years after her birth date.

Yafya cringed when he came across that. Unlike Sublime Beastars before him, he did not like to get involved in the political aspects of his society. Beasts like Sabine the caribou-red wolf allowed him to leave that aspect of the job to others, but occasionally something would slip through the cracks that would make even him embarrassed at his occasional lack of knowledge. The fact that obvious hybrids were, legally, considered non-entities was one of them. It was an urban legend, he and everyone he knew thought. How could a living being not be a legal entity? When he had found out, through a speech given by Sabine no less, on the front steps of the counsel building in front of the media, that it was not an urban legend, he'd been dumb founded. A hybrid, especially one that blatantly did not look like a specific species when born, was not issued a birth certificate, because the 'species' line could not be filled out. Kindhearted doctors had issued them anyway, when they could. Not so kindhearted ones hadn't. The form had been changed to eliminate the species line, replacing it with a check of 'carnivore' or 'herbivore', but it had been during his tenure as Sublime Beastar, pathetically too late, even if he did disagree with interspecies relationships.

Her file also contained the birth certificates of her two natural born children, both born out of wedlock and the 'father' line left blank, though everyone knew who their father was, and the paperwork for adoption papers for a shock chick hybrid ten years ago, which were duly filled out with her brother as her counsel. She was granted custody, the chick was given a birth certificate with the parents written as 'unknown', and on they we all went with their happy little lives.

What her file did not say was that she was fluent in seaspeak, nor that her canine tail wagged, nor that her antlers, despite that she was a female, would be the envy of some males that Yafya knew. It did not mention that her attention seemed to flitter from thing to thing. Nor that she was like a ball of static electricity, waiting for someone to touch her so the jolt could discharge sending a blast of lightning from one point to the next, unfocused like a plasma ball. But like a plasma ball, that was an illusion, for she came back each time to the real reason _she'd_ come to him, to get help with disappearing hybrid children. He bristled that he didn't know about that. Nor did it mention that she seemed to emit a physical presence that pressed against him before he ever touched her, for he didn't touch her the entire time she'd been there.

"Sir," one of his rats came into his living room. "The Inspector is here with the officer you sent out on your errand."

Yafya sighed. "Of course he is."

The two officers entered, the saint bernard inspector and the junior that Yafya had taken aside before he'd escorted Sabine the caribou red wolf from his home.

"Sir," the inspector, his eye ridges drawing together in worry, "I had no idea she was on her way up here, I-"

Yafya held up his long fingered hand to silence him. "I invited her here," he said.

The saint bernard fumbled over his words before he said, "What?"

"Do you really think someone would be able to find their way into my home if I did not invite them?" the horse asked, his voice dripping with disgust.

"But—but, sir," he stammered. "She's a criminal."

"A criminal that has had the endorsement of both Thalia the tigress when she was alive, and the Mayor every time she has petitioned to speak in front of the counsel." Yafya waved the file folder in front of the Inspector's face and then held it out to him. "Your people need to do a better job of documenting their _criminals_, that dossier is pathetic."

"She's a member of the Haiburriddogumi-" The inspector raised his voice.

"She is not," Yafya cut him off. "Members claim in court she is not initiated into the gang and she has no identifying marks anywhere on her body, so says the form in there," he pointed the file folder, "signed you."

The junior officer slowly turned his head toward his superior and sidled away from him.

"I do hope a female officer was in the room when you did the inspection," Yafya said causally. "Or was that back in the days before that was mandated?"

Inspector St. Bernard opened his mouth to answer and the junior officer slid a little further away from him.

Before he could say anything, Yafya continued, "What do you know about hybrid children being kidnapped?"

"Uh," the saint bernard blinked.

"That's why she was here," Yafya rolled his hand, as if it was obvious. "Why else would a hybrid female be coming up to my apartments? Do you know how that makes me look, when she asks me about hybrid children being kidnapped, and I have nothing to say about it, because I haven't been informed about it?" His voice rose as he spoke, his nostrils flaring.

"Hybrid children go missing all the time," the inspector said. "Their parents are derelicts. They don't care about their kids."

The junior officer had obviously abandoned his senior, as he took a proper step away from him, not willing to take any wrath that might thrown the inspector's way, the young canine's eyes wide.

"And you know this, how?" Yafya asked. "Because you've seen so many hybrid parents? How many have you interacted with? Where? My guess is, here, in this station, none of them with their children." His deep voice was like thunder echoing through the space. "She thinks there is a predator targeting that population for that very reason, inspector. Because the police will not handle the cases with any care!"

"She isn't reliable," the saint bernard tried to say.

"She seems perfectly reliable to me." Yafya said quietly, a stark contrast to just a moment before. "She seemed perfectly reliable to Thalia the tigress. That, alone, should make the police department trust her."

"Thalia was different," the inspector replied.

"Because she was a pure bred carnivore," Yafya finished the sentence for him.

"Because she was on the counsel," the saint bernard replied quietly.

Yafya turned to the junior officer, showing indifferently he was done with the inspector. "Did you do what I asked?"

The younger canine nodded. "Yes," he said. "Lyssa the lioness is still alive, and still being held in the maximum security prison."


	16. Chapter 16

Tycho the crocodile/komodo dragon hybrid banged his fist on table, gathering the attention of the hybrids all gathered in the bottom floor apartment of the Half-Coronet Flats. "Everybody's here!" he thundered. "Shut up!"

"You shut up, Tycho," someone in the back muttered.

The apartment, which was a lower class open room, had the removable walls all removed years ago. It had no toilet or bath, as each floor of the building had a shared toilet and one bath in the very top level. That suited the gathering just fine, since this particular apartment hadn't been used as a living space since Sabine and Samayueru had moved more than two decades ago.

"You shut up," Tycho replied, flipping his komodo dragon tongue out his mouth.

"It's time for business," Viggo, Tycho's older brother announced. With that, the open flat quieted, the children who were present were hushed or ushered out, and Sabine made herself comfortable on a cushion next to Ginny the zonkey. Ginny's grandson, Sota, crawled into Sabine's lap, his canine tail wagging, a stark contrast to the rest of his equine body. He reached up and gave his godmother her customary kiss, then began to stroke the soft pinfeathers of the chick in the nesting basket on Sabine's chest. Frankie, Ginny's zorse husband, sat on a cushion behind them and booped Sota on the nose, who giggled. With the group of them in close proximity, Ginny, Sabine, and Sota all raised their noses toward Frankie, who lowered his, and for a few breaths, they breathed each other's air in true equine fashion and Sabine was content.

"Ichi!" Eichi announced.

"What the baby said," someone in the back agreed.

The room laughed.

This was where Sabine felt most at home. Despite her education, despite rubbing elbows with politicians, despite apologizing to Beastars, despite not a single beast in the room being the same species as her (Samayueru wasn't present tonight, he had a case he was readying for), this was her home. This apartment was where she was born and had been raised, was the place where The Plan had been hatched and gone into action, where all the plans afterward had branched from, and where all the people who loved her and she loved stemmed. Most of them were present today, at this informal meeting of the Haiburriddogumi. She had been raised with them, lived with them, would die for them, go to and had gone to prison for them, do her duty for them, and was doing so now.

Frankie reached once of his long fingers over Sabine's shoulder and stroked Eichi's head before giving his grandson a pat, then laying his arm over his wife's shoulder. Ginny leaned into him and made herself comfortable. She caught eyes with her son Takahiro next to Ginny's youngest son, Francis, across the room and smiled at them both. They returned it, and Francis, who had gotten the 'lucky' end of the hybrid stick from his parents and ended up looking like a zebra, waved to Eichi in his little nesting basket. Sota waved back to his young uncle.

"Old business," Tycho announced, taking out a binder and opening it. He handed it to Viggo.

"Accounts payable?" Viggo asked.

"Payed up," Tycho answered.

Again, the room laughed.

"Does anyone want to dispute that?" Viggo asked.

No one answered.

"Accounts spendable?" Viggo asked.

Tycho announced the amount.

"Does anyone want to dispute that?" Viggo asked. After a moment of silence, he nodded. "Alright, then. New business."

Grandfather Hagetaka stood up slowly, his black feathers were dulled gray with age, and were thinner than they'd been in his young years when he had stood in Viggo's position as head of the Haiburriddogumi, but the vulture was still a formidable beast when he stood to his full height, which still towered over most of those there. He shook slightly, garnering a few giggles from the younger people gathered, then got out his reading glasses before looking that piece of paper in front of him.

"The pig-skunk family two buildings down just lost their job. They have seven piglets, we need to keep an eye on them and make sure they are getting enough food and bills are paid," the vulture said.

Viggo pointed a canine hybrid. "You're eyeballs," he said. The canine nodded.

"With the change in weather, we all need to keep an eye on the primary schoolers and make sure everyone is clothed appropriately. Come to Kiyoko with any names of anyone who is need." Grandmother Washi stood up briefly and made a quick bow, her eagle feathers also faded from the rich brown of her youth to a soft dove, before she sank back down to her cushion.

"And as we are on the subject of kids," Viggo piped up. "Everyone keep their eyes open. Operation Party Crasher is still open."

A grumble went through those gathered, along with a few sour looks toward Sabine.

"These things take time," Grandfather Hagetaka said in Sabine's defense. "And none of you have gotten any farther than anyone else."

The grumbling stopped and Sabine felt Ginny's hand on her knee as the red wolf-caribou looked down at the baby chick in the basket on her chest.

"Any other new business?" Viggo asked.

Grandfather laughed, glanced toward Viggo above his reading glasses, and said, "Yeah, and you are never going to believe this."

Viggo raised one of his scaly eyeridges.

"The Shishigumi have a new leader."

"Why is that surprising?" Viggo asked. "They were due for one."

A ligress in the back, holding a lion cub to her chest laughed. Grandfather Hagetaka twisted his long neck to look at her and shared a secret smile with the young woman. "He's a red deer," the old vulture chuckled.

There was a moment of silence before Viggo said, "You're shitting me."

"True as treasure," the ligress in the back pipped up. "My lion cousin's baby daddy is one of the Shishigumi. I heard it from his mouth."

Viggo laughed, shaking his large head. "Well, someone has to go say hello to this new leader of the Shishigumi who is a deer." He swiveled his head to face Sabine.

She looked around, as if he could be looking at someone else. "Who? Me?" She put her hand over Eichi.

"Who else?" he asked.

"Some other deer," she said.

"Like….?" he spread his hand through the room.

She looked around. "Him," she pointed to a young buck who suddenly looked like he was about to be hit by a bus.

"They'll eat him alive," Tycho said. "Besides, you have connections."

A series of laughs went through the crowd of the people of her generation.

Sabine growled. "That was a long time ago."

"He hasn't forgotten," Frankie said behind her. "I promise."

"Shut up," she hissed to the zorse. "We don't even know if he's still alive," Sabine shot back to him, giving him a nasty look for outing her. "It's been a good fifteen years since I saw him last, and that was just in passing."

"Is Ibuki still alive?" Frankie asked the ligress in the back.

"As far as I know," she answered.

Frankie smiled smugly.

Sabine dropped her shoulders. "Tonight?" she asked Viggo. "I'm still in my work clothes!" She gestured to the pencil skirt and button up blouse she wore from having come from her therapy office.

"He's probably still in his work clothes," Viggo countered.

"I'll go with you, mom," Takahiro offered quietly. A few of the adults in the room raised their eyebrows, looking in his direction.

"No, you won't." Sabine's voice was deadly. She took the basket off of her chest and handed it to Ginny. "I guess the kids are staying the night at your place to night."

The zonkey smiled brightly. "Nothing like a full house!" she beamed.

Sabine huffed through her nose. "You're supposed to be on my side!"

Her best friends shook her head, taking the basket and strapping it on. "I am on your side. Go out. Have fun. Reminisce about old times."

"I am _not_ reminiscing about old times," she snapped.

Grandfather Hagetaka and Grandmother Washi came up behind her, each of them stroking her back lovingly as they approached. "Is this the little rascal that won't sleep?" Grandmother Washi asked.

Sabine nodded. "Yes," she said. "I think he might be a yokai in the shape of a chicken."

"I thought that about one of our children," Grandfather said, "only he was in the shape of a vulture-eagle."

"Oh, I prayed over that boy," Grandmother in a trying voice. She reached over and stroked Eichi's head. She turned to Sabine, and smiled slyly. "You have a job to do, don't you?"

Sabine grumbled.

"Don't play cards," Grandfather said with a wink.

Sabine felt her entire face flush as she turned away. "I haven't played cards since I was fifteen, Grandpa," she groused. "It only takes me once learn my lesson."

The old vulture and his eagle wife both laughed out loud. "That," the old man said, "is and out and out lie!"


	17. Chapter 17

Sabine was loathe to leave the community meeting, she hadn't realized how lonely she'd been feeling.

Viggo had come up to her before she'd left her bottom floor flat. "Tomorrow is donation day," he'd purred with a knowing smile. She'd smiled back, and nodded.

She'd lingered in Grandfather and Grandmother's apartment longer than she should have, leaving her purse there, but taking both her personal phone, and the one Yafya gave her out. She put both in her blazer pockets before anyone could see the second phone. She shoved the excited thought of _I have access to the Sublime Beastar, _out of her mind before it could connect with her tail and give anything anyway.

"Who is this lion ex-boyfriend you are going to see," Dabi asked.

"He wasn't my boyfriend," Sabine corrected, suddenly glad she wasn't going to be fielding these kinds of questions all night. She glanced behind her quickly to make sure the canine in her hadn't betrayed her in anyway. Her tail was wagging slowly, as if usually did, a general happiness, perhaps, it could be surmised at the people around her, going out with a purpose. She petted Eichi on his head and relished Grandmother Washi rubbing her back. "He was never my boyfriend. He is way too young to be my boyfriend."

"Maybe she'll get lucky and find a boyfriend," Ginny whispered loudly to the ostrich hybrid.

"Maybe people will mind their own business and not worry about me having a boyfriend," Sabine shot back.

"Maybe if you got a boyfriend, you would be happier," Ginny replied.

"A boyfriend might do you good, dear," Grandmother Washi said gently.

"You, too, Grandma?" Sabine turned the eagle. "You're supposed to be on my side."

"I am on your side," Grandmother Washi assured her. "If you want a girlfriend, I won't judge."

"I don't have time for a boyfriend," Sabine straightened her blazer and headed for the door. "Or a girlfriend," she rolled her eyes. "I have too much to do. Like try and find lions in the Back Alley Market and convince them to let me meet their deer leader."

And so that was what she was doing now, wandering the known haunts of the shishigumi's turf trying to see if she could find a lion she recognized. She had to admit, the venture was making her feel particularly old. Wearing her business clothes, she wasn't being approached by anyone for anything, to buy or sell, not to be robbed, not to be hit on, nothing. Either she looked intimidating enough in a business coat and pencil skirt not to messed with or she looked old enough not to be bothered with. She decided to pretend it was the former, although she had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn't.

After about two and a half hours of popping her head in and out of restaurants and bars, a young lion, whose mane was barely starting to grow in, came up to her with a wide grin on his face and said, "I know who you're looking for."

"Am I that obvious?" she asked.

He smiled knowingly.

"Oh, you know that story, huh?" She cleared her throat.

He nodded and waggled his eyebrow whiskers.

She waited a moment before she said, "Are you going to tell me where he is?"

"Yeah!" the cub piped up, giving her the name of a bar.

"No wonder I couldn't find him," she sang. "He's moving up in the world."

Sure enough, she found the lion she was looking for, along with another one, in the bar the cub had told her. Both were obviously at the end of a meal, and drinking from rocks glasses. The dining room was filled with cigarette smoke, giving it a misty haze as Sabine wended her way through the tables uninvited and sank down on the pillow right next to Ibuki, pinching him on the waist as she did. "Hey, you!"

The younger lion across from him looked at her with wide eyes and as shocked expression as she made herself comfortable.

Ibuki, for his part, smiled widely and made no effort to move away from her. "I was wondering how long it was going take you to get here," he said.

She gave him a mock hurt expression. "I got here as soon as I found out."

Ibuki turned to the young lion across from and gave him a knowing look.

"What?" Sabine asked, looking to Ibuki's companion. When the young lion shrugged, Sabine regarded him hard, her ire rising slightly. This wasn't going the way she planned, but then, she hadn't had much time to make a plan. "How old are you?" she asked, her violet eyes straying over lighter hints of color on his dark furred face. "Twelve?"

"No," he said petulantly. "I'm 24."

"Holy brontosaur, I'm old," Sabine muttered, flopping her head on Ibuki's shoulder with a thud.

Ibuki laughed, moving his head to the side so as not to get bonked by her antlers. "I know," he said soothingly. "You could have kids Agata's age."

"Oh, shut up, you," she poked him hard in the ribs as she sat up. She probably poked him harder than she meant to, how was he know how hard she'd fought the jealousy of her friends who had children Agata's age, or older?

"You're looking food for an old female," he said, giving her an appreciative look up and down and smiling.

She shook her head and laughed good naturedly. "I have several years to go before I am old," she told him harshly. "I am middle aged. One day, you, too, shall be middle aged. And not too long from now."

"You're looking good for a middle-aged female," Ibuki corrected himself, smoothly. "Middle aged females are in the prime of their lives." He took a sip of his drink.

Agata looked at the older lion as if he had crabs crawling out of his mane.

"Good save," Sabine drawled to Ibuki. "Indeed, they are. Anyway, I came looking for you as soon as I found you the strange news, which was about two hours ago."

"In a committee meeting?" Agata asked.

Sabine's face deadpanned and Ibuki looked away to hide a smile.

"No," she said. "In a _community_ meeting. Not a _committee_ meeting." She poked Ibuki hard in the ribs again with the pad of her pointer finger while still looking at Agata. "The Haiburriddogumi takes care of its community. Which is why the wharf isn't the back alley market."

"He doesn't know, Sabine," Ibuki turned toward her, coming to Agata's rescue. "He's just a kid."

Sabine squinted at him then at Ibuki, then sank down into her cushion. "So, are the rumors true?"

"I'm guessing, since the Haiburriddogumi sent you, you are referring to the rumors of the Shishigumi's new leader, then yes, they are." Ibuki straightened his glasses as he looked at her, a smug smile on his maw.

She focused on his amber eyes, rather than her reflection in his glasses, which brought to bear the fact that she wasn't a species of anything, while he was a very proud and powerful lion. He'd been that way as a youth, too, she recalled. As an adult, he'd grown into his lionhood in a calm and confident way that didn't need to show off. That was one of the things she'd always liked about him. That, and he had a brain in his head. Her reflection, on the other hand, showed something that mixed up, not a reindeer, not a wolf, and in the light of the restaurant, not even a pretty mix of the two.

"Do I get to meet him?" she asked.

"Right now?" asked Agata from across the table.

Ibuki kept his eyes on her, ignoring the younger lion as if he hadn't said anything. "Right now?" he repeated, his tone much more conversational.

"That is why I am here," Sabine returned, raising her eye ridges. "To meet him, right now. If he isn't too busy for a hello from the Haiburriddogumi, of course."

"I think he probably has some time for that," Ibuki gave her thigh a pat before standing and holding his hand out to help her up. As she took it, Agata scrambled to his feet and threw some bills on the table. Ibuki hoisted her to her feet. "I think you'll be pretty impressed with the new boss."


	18. Chapter 18

Yafya waited in the meeting room, the only things in it were two bolted down chairs and a table between them. The lights from the city that glinted in the windows seemed like tiny teasing fairies, trying to lead one away into the night, only to come against the impenetrable bars that would not allow even the strongest of beasts to break out of this place.

The lock on the door clicked, and when it opened, the burly grizzly bear officer led in an elderly big cat in an orange jumpsuit, a muzzle on her face and her hands and feet bound in chains. If Yafya had not known whom he was coming to the maximum security prison to see, he would not have recognized Lyssa the ligeress.

Ten years prior, Lyssa, in her fifties, had been a striking figure. With the size, presence and stripes of a tigress, but with the subtle coloring of a sandy beach and fine features of a lioness, she had been the pride of Thalia's side, who had been a beacon of big catess-hood in her own right. Now, she was overslender, her skin sagged on her body, and she looked much older than her sixty something years. The muzzle, which would remain on her even after she died, allowed her only a liquid diet, as part of her punishment affected every part of her being. She shuffled as she walked, the chains on her ankles allowing her to do nothing more than that, and her shoulders sagged, defeated.

But when she looked up at him, her topaz eyes were sharp. "Yafya, the Black Devil," she said in a clear voice with a flick of her tail. "Of all the people who would be coming to visit me in my confinement, I must admit, you are the last I would expect."

The horse motioned to one of the empty chairs. "This isn't a social visit, I assure you," he said with venom in his voice.

"Oh, I wouldn't expect a social visit," she admitted, shuffling to the chair in her prison-issued slippered feet. "Not from you."

He turned to the grizzly bear, who had taken up sentry by the door. "You can leave us," he said in a voice that broached no argument. The bear blinked, but didn't say anything and Yafya had to fight the disgust that had been growing since he'd entered this building. "I can handle her, and there are some personal things I'd like to discuss with her."

The bear nodded slowly. "I'll be just outside, sir," he said softly, leaving the room, the door clicking loudly behind him.

When Yafya turned back to Lyssa, she was already seated, her hands held together in front of her. The tips of her fingers were blunted, her claws having been removed as part of her sentence, the chains at her wrists resting on the table like fine jewelry that Thalia had given her for her birthday. "Something personal?" she said, frowning in interest underneath the muzzle.

Yafya slid into the only other empty seat, his heart racing. He knew that his outward appearance was that of ultimate calm. The demon that he cultured all of his life, that he had perfected as his time as the Sublime Beastar, that he even believed occasionally, that he was invincible, that nothing could touch him, that the ten degrees that he lacked in his vision was but a speck of dust in the wind, was all that Lyssa could see. But even with just he and her, alone with an elderly carnivore in this almost empty room, he wanted to run, or at the very least, kick out at something. Knowing what she had done, what she was capable of...there was a reason she was cursed to wear a muzzle for the rest of her life, the claws on her hands and feet cut off.

He wished for his blindfold, if nothing else for the suppression of his vision. He could see the lights glinting in the window, the cobwebs in the corner of the room, one of them still with a spider in it. He could smell Lyssa, the distinct scent of big cat, mixed with institution and inactivity. He willed his heart to slow and leaned forward. "I want to ask you about Sabine the caribou-red wolf."

Lyssa's face changed as if she'd been slapped, the interesting pucker turning into a slack jawed stare, the loose skin on her lips hanging from her teeth, showing the little white gems in the florescent light of the meeting room, her topaz eyes utterly surprised. It only lasted for a moment, but the moment was long enough for Yafya to catch it. It was just as quickly replaced with a look of disgust, her upper lip turned upward just far enough to not show her teeth, her nose wrinkling. "You have brought me out of my cell to talk to you about Sabine?" she asked, each word punctuated with hatred.

"I certainly don't need to ask you how you feel about her," he said. "You make that plainly obvious."

Lyssa leaned forward, squinting. "You know nothing," she said firmly. "None of you know anything." She then leaned back, her face smoothing out, as if the outburst hadn't happened. "What do you want to know about my old friend? Has she committed some heinous crime that will land her in here with me?"

Yafya resisted the bait. "Can she be trusted?" he asked.

She leaned back, chuckling slightly, her hands slipping from the table to her lap, only the chains making noise with her lack of claws. "Well, that depends on what with," she said in the cat like voice that Yafya recognized from years ago.

"Would it be easier to list what she can't be trusted with?" he asked, again, fighting the urge to kick the table over. When he felt like this, he often turned the flight response into anger, made it switch to the fight response against his body's will, but once he'd convinced his psyche that was what it was, he felt more in control. It was these times, when his body wanted to run, or wanted to fly over the table and tear the old ligeress to bits, but he had to stay calm and seated, that were the worst.

"She can't be trusted to let her people be oppressed," Lyssa said. "She'll betray you in a heartbeat before she'll let you betray them."

"Will she betray them?" he asked.

"For the greater good," Lyssa replied. "She is a lover of the greater good." The smile on Lyssa's face turned malicious as she leaned forward again, placing her hands back on the table. Thre was something grotesque in them, that they did not match the ligerness of her, blunted at the tips as they were. "The greater good places its arms around her and holds her tight to its chest, whispering lies into her ears, and she, like the blind lover she is, believes them. Just like you, Yafya."

The horse felt his ears flatten to the side and his eyes widen in surprise. "And what is the greater good, Lyssa?" he asked, harsher than he meant.

"For her?" Lyssa paused. "Equality for all beings. '_Equality is not a fight, it's every beast's right,'_" she sang the slogan that hybrids had been chanting for over sixty years in their small equality movement, one that hadn't gained traction until Yafya's generation. "Her greater good isn't the same as yours, though." Her voice seemed to echo in the room.


	19. Chapter 19

Ibuki and Agata led Sabine through the streets of the Back Alley Market to the Shishigumi building, and the reindeer-red wolf had to admit to herself, she was impressed. This was not the shabby place of only a few years, and maybe even months, before. The exterior was gussied up, not only by Back Alley Market standards, but would be considered nice by even middle class standards. There were plants on either side of the entrance, which was barred and locked, the greenery flourished with life, obviously cared for and protected from the rougher denizens of the area. The building was freshly painted and unstained, the canopies on it untorn and unfrayed. It stood out like a jewel among the derelict and unkempt real estate around it.

"The shishigumi are doing well for themselves," Sabine said quietly to Ibuki.

"Our new leader knows how to keep the books," Ibuki replied with a proud smile.

"That I can see." She nodded as Agata unlocked the gate in the front of the door, then door itself, allowing them to enter the building.

While the inside of the building didn't look like she remembered, it was much neater and cleaner, the smelled exactly like she remembered; lion, liquor, silvervine, and musk. To the right was a common area, where several lions were gathered, playing a game of some sort. They looked up when the door opened.

"Hey, Sabine!" called one of them, through a scarf over his mouth.

"Hey, Sabu!" she called back, her tail wagging at her old classmate. She ran with him in her youth, when they were both still in school. She remembered when his face was smooth, when he didn't sport the claw scar above his eye on his cream furred face, and the reason for the scarf around his nose. She even remembered when he didn't wear his dark brown mane in a mohawk. But then, he would be able to say he remembered her when she didn't even have antlers.

"We've been expected you," he said, turning back to the game.

"So I hear," she muttered, starting to feel a little uncomfortable. She hadn't brought a weapon with her, counting on the goodwill of relations to get her through. Besides, if a fight happened, she'd be done for, there was no way she'd win against so many (though she'd take a few down before she was finished, she was sure). Was this a set up? _Please, don't be a set up._

She did a body check, kept her ears forward, to indicate she was interested in her surroundings, not to show any anxiety by having them back or to the side. Her tail was slightly lifted and while it was no longer wagging, it wasn't drooping. She made sure that her fur wasn't raised at her long ruff or at the low of her back, as Ibuki knocked nonchalantly on a door at the end of the hall. She didn't smell any deception, all of the lions displayed a laid back body language, almost happy.

They waited a moment, then a voice called, "Come in," from behind the door.

Agata opened it and poked only his head in, "A representative from the Haiburiddogumi is here to pay their respects to you, boss," he said softly.

"About time," the voice grumbled.

Sabine did not stifle the loud huff that she let escape her caribou lips. Ibuki just smiled, as if it were a theater act playing out just as he was anticipating. _Shit, I have been set up,_ she realized, only not in the way she'd expected in the way she was afraid of only a moment ago. She reached over and pinched Ibuki on the waist again, just as she had in the restaurant.

He batted her hand away and chuckled. "Best not keep him waiting in his own house," he purred.

"You haven't changed a bit," she replied with a smile.

"Neither have you," Ibuki countered as Agata opened the door fully and held his hand out for Sabine to enter.

Sabine expected a deer, but what she saw sitting behind the large desk in the old fashioned office shocked her to the point where she stopped two steps into the doorway. The deer was a young elk, with large, dark round eyes, slight of build almost a caricature among the burly lions of the Shishigumi. Sitting down in the large velvet chair that almost engulfed him, he looked up at her with a smug smile, the large round eyes filled with an unsettling satisfaction as he looked her over.

"The boys have been expecting you," he said.

Her head had to be playing tricks on her. For some reason, her brain was taking a memory out of her subconscious and placing it on top of another red deer's body for some strange reason. Maybe it was because she was in the Back Alley Market and it was bringing back painful memories that she'd shoved to the back of her mind years ago. But his voice was the right voice, she'd heard it when he'd performed at school, even if he didn't know she'd come to see him.

She probably took in two breaths before she was able to say, "Louis?"

His smile spread over his muzzle, though it didn't grow in warmth as it did. He stood from the desk, leaning on it, toward her. He looked so small and young behind the desk, her heart ached for him as he smiled in confirmation of her saying his name.

"It is satisfying to finally see you in person, Sabine-san," Louis said, the look on his face still predatory. "I am pleased that you hold up to your ghost stories."

"You two know each other, boss?" Ibuki asked, his deep voice soft and no longer jovial.

"In a way," Louis said, moving around the desk, "this is a little bit of a family reunion. Sabine is something of my…" he paused, searching for a word, "godmother."

For a brief moment the austere office disappeared from Sabine's view and all she saw was _the face of __the__ young __new president of The Horns Conglomerate,__ Og__u__ma __the red deer, sitting at her little kitchen table at her middle class apartment. In her __mid-twenties, __ Sabine owned more than she ever thought she would in her life. She had __two__ beautiful son__s,__ an apartment bigger than anything she ever thought she would have, __friends who adored her, __a man who loved her, she had no doubt, sitting next to his boss, whom he had brought to his mistress's house after work._

_He'd told her about the gossip going around the office when he came their apartment to have lunch each day. No matter what her schedule was, the caribou vice president of the Horns Conglomerate, the father of Sabine's children demanded she be home at 1pm for their lunch. It rankled her like nothing else in the world, to be _

_**told**__ what to do, but she did it, for the sake of The Plan. The young, new president, "Who is quite the buck, let me tell you," the old man had told her, __was about the same age as her. __"__I don't know what it is about your generation, that it produced such powerful people." __The young president's __wife had left him and had their arranged marriage annulled under the reasoning of 'marriage under false pretenses.' It turned out that Oguma was infertile, and that wouldn't do for her family. __As Oguma's father's best friend and both his and his father's vice president, her penehusband felt he needed to do something to help._

_He didn't have the slightest clue how he could help, but he knew very well that Sabine could. _

_Sitting across from her, Kenzou __a baby not even walking on his own yet, resting on her belly and reaching for the silverware at the table__, Oguma looked into her eyes much in the same way most deer species did, his eyes trying desperately trying to ignore the canine aspects of her features, which were mostly at her back now that she was grown. But her eyes were canine eyes, not the round, beautiful, soulful eyes of an herbivore. She turned her head while keeping her eyes on him, in traditional herbivore fashion as he leaned forward, a determination coming from him that was almost not sane._

_"No," he replied. "He has to be a toddler, so we know that he's strong. With a baby, we won't know that he's strong or not." He learned farther forward, and Sabine tried to mimic the gesture, but she wasn't able to do much with Kenzou blocking her way in he_

_r lap._ _Takahiro nuzzled into his father's side, who sat next to Oguma at the table. "Do you understand? He has to be __**strong**__. He has to change the world."_

_She did understand. She understood the desperation in his voice, because she'd felt it. She understood the desire to change the world, it was something she thought of every day since she discovered a single beast could actually do it. "Yes," she said solemnly. "I understand."_

"_You can find a child?" Oguma asked, skeptical._

"_I know where to look," she corrected, feeling shame creeping on her that she had such knowledge in such company._

_And look she had, until she'd found what she was looking for._

And now he was all grown up, standing in front of her, in a den of lions.


	20. Chapter 20

"And you are so sure you know what _my_ greater good is?" Yafya asked the ligeress. It took everything in him to keep his body language relaxed, to not tip his fear over into anger and lean over the table, press his aura against her to make her cower in the bare plastic chair in which she sat.

"Your greater good is peace," she replied. "Peace is not necessarily on Sabine's agenda. You, though...you will nurture peace. Peace through tyranny if need be. Keep the carnivores down if you must, just to keep the peace. Suppress any instincts that do not keep the peace." Her voice was almost hypnotic in its cadence. "And you have done a wonderful job, Beastar. Look out at the City, and see how she adores you." She gestured, albeit very a small one, with her hand, the fingers blunted with her claws removed, toward the window. "Does she satisfy you when she holds you in her arms at night?"

"Do the arms of the dead female caribou you sexually assaulted and then ate satisfy you behind your cold steel bars, Lyssa?" he asked in return, the anger finally breaking through the fear and the imposed calm. He leaned forward, his ears pinned almost to his neck, his eyes slits.

The ligress did not seem phased by his anger at all, when his aura would have hit another beast like a brick wall. "I didn't assault a single one of those females," she said calmly. "Every one of them was consensual."

"I'm sure each of them asked to be eaten," he said sarcastically through clenched teeth, pressing his hands against the table. If he didn't he was afraid of what he might do with them. He thought he was over this, when the trial ended, and she was sentenced to life imprisonment, he thought he could get over the betrayal he felt at the justice system.

At the very least, Lyssa had been convicted of predating eight female caribou over the course of several years, after sexually assaulting each one, the line starting after her close association with Sabine the caribou-red wolf. It was during the trial that the elderly Thalia the Tigress, one of the first females on the Beastar counsel, of whom Lyssa and she had been long time lovers and life-partners, had died of a heart attack. While Yafya might not have agreed with many of Thalia's stances in her private life, the tigress had been one of his staunchest supporters, especially in his younger years when he had first had the position of Sublime Beastar. She almost always had his back, even when he wasn't sure she should have. Contrarily, she had been Sabine's prime political supporter, backing her equality initiatives wholeheartedly. Thalia the tigress has brought more reforms to the law books in the past 50 years than any other counselor of her era, whether she got official credit for it or not. The tigress's death was a hard blow to the counsel, despite that she was already in her 70s. But, as many suspected, Thalia's heart couldn't take finding out that love of her life had been a serial predator over her pet political project for more than a decade.

But he wasn't over it. His desire to leap over the table to kick the life out of the ligress who sat across from him made his legs tingle. She didn't deserve life imprisonment. She deserved to be carrot fertilizer. If he had gotten to her before the police department had, that is exactly what she would be.

"You've never loved anyone, have you Yafya?" she asked, her clear voice, such a stark contrast to her ragged appearance echoed in the empty room. "Have you ever desired something so much that your arms ache to hold it? That your mouth aches to kiss it? That your tongue longs to lick it? For a carnivore, they smell blood, and they long to taste it. Not the fur, not the sweat, but the iron of the blood under the skin that beats." Again her voice took on that hypnotic cadence, almost sing-songy, and pressed his fingertips into the tabletop to keep from reaching for her throat. "The heartbeat is like a song, singing out to you. You feel it in your jaw, in your teeth. Herbivore blood has the sweetest sound, and when it's mixed with affection...When she would come close I could-" The ligress's voice hitched and she actually smiled, not the calculating ones from before, a sweet one.

Then, it was replaced with a scowl, a look probably well practiced from a decade in this place. "You know nothing," she hissed.

"I know what you did," Yafya seethed back.

The calculating smile was back on Lyssa's face, her pupils round as she leaned forward, the muzzle on her snout making a slight jingling sound as she moved. "You know nothing. You come to me wanting to know if Sabine the caribou-red wolf can be trusted? Yes. She can be trusted. She's kept all of my secrets all of these years."

"How do you know?" Yafya asked, forcing his fingers to relax against the table and making his ears raise from his head.

"Because they haven't executed me," Lyssa said with a deranged laugh.

Yafya backed up in his chair, putting has much distance between himself and the ligress as he could without standing up. He felt his eyes go wide, the fear forcing itself into the forefront of his chest once again, the desire to kick, to run, almost overwhelming. What had she done that he _didn't_ know?

"But I would tell you, Black Devil," Lyssa continued, "that Thalia loved Sabine for the same reason she loved you. You might want to keep that in mind before you make her one of your comrades in arms."

Disgust made its way through the fear that clenched at his heart, making it easier for him to keep his ears forward and sneer. She dared talk about love, about how Thalia loved, about whom the tigress compared him to? "Oh? And what would that be?" He made sure that he stared at her head on, not turning his head to the side.

"Both of you desire balance and justice in society," Lyssa answered without pausing. "And both of you are willing to die and kill for it. Both of you understand what society is and what society isn't, and what your role in it is." She leaned forward, a smug smile back on her mouth, with looked slightly demonic behind the muzzle. "But do you know the difference between you and Sabine, what Thalia was never able to understand?"

"And what is that?" Yafya spat.

"She isn't given the privilege of being able to believe in sanctimoniousness," Lyssa said. "She can't grow a pretty field of carrots over a graveyard of carnivore bodies and call it justice. Because she is a hybrid, she is forced to accept what she actually sees in the mirror."


	21. Chapter 21

"Does your father know you're here?" Sabine asked Louis, leaning her head forward on her neck toward the young man, her ears flopping in an almost flying motion as she did so. The young buck looked at her like she had roaches coming out of said flopping ears. She shook her head, feeling utterly out of place. "Nevermind," she muttered. "That's a stupid question." _You've been out of the loop for a decade, Sabine,_ she told herself. _You're bound to make a few mistakes._ Mistakes like that, though, got you killed in places like this.

Of course Oguma knew he was here. If he didn't he would currently have the city being scoured and then would soon know that Louis was here, and have him forcibly removed. She doubted that the boy had been gone for two months and Oguma had not found him yet. Which meant, the president of Horns Conglomerate knew exactly where his son was. It was Sabine who hadn't known.

She didn't seem to know a lot of stuff lately.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, walking fully into the room. She heard the door click closed behind her, and could smell that neither Agata nor Ibuki had left the room.

"I would have thought," Louis said smoothly, "that the Haiburriddogumi would have sent a representative member of their esteemed organization to come speak with me. My understanding is that you are _not _a member, despite the boys telling me you were the one who would show up." He smirked, as if he knew a secret, and Sabine had to suppress a nasty, motherly retort.

She might be dealing with a schoolboy, but she was dealing with a schoolboy who had a pack of lions at his disposal.

She took a deep breath, did a body check; ears forward, hair on her neck and back down, shoulders relaxed, tail curled up. She cocked her hip to the side and tilted her head in the opposite direction. "I'm member enough," she said. "The next candidate was a fawn who was too afraid he'd get eaten by a lion."

"As he should be," Louis replied, stepping closer to her. His eyes roamed over, like he was examining an art piece that he was considering buying or not. "You look more…" he paused, twisting his wrist as he thought of a word, "hybrid-ish close up than you do on the television."

"I look more mixed," she corrected with an ironic smile. "Yeah, I get that a lot. The canine isn't so easy to see in my face from far away." Next, he'd comment on how manly her antlers made her look. She smiled a carnivore smile, the front of her mouth closed, but the back open to show the sharp teeth while concealing her fangs. "But it's there, I promise."

"I can see that," Louis said, smiling back. There was a bit more warmth in it now, and Sabine had a sneaking suspicion that she had passed some sort of test, though she couldn't quite figure out what it was. She hated that feeling, of knowing just enough to be aware, but not enough to know what the 'what' actually was.

She took a deep breath. She'd been out of this game for too long that it was unnerving her like this. "Viggo of the Haiburriddogumi sends his regards," she said in a formal voice, giving a small bow. She wasn't going to give him, or anyone else, a deep one. "And his congratulations. He hopes that relations between our two clans can remain as amicable as it was before. Save that the last Chief Lion was a dickhead," she added.

"Did he really say that?" Agata whispered.

"No," Sabine turned to the young lion. "I said that."

"I wouldn't be surprised if Viggo said that," Ibuki muttered.

"Well," Sabine shrugged, "he might have said it at some point. I'm saying it now."

"That's not very polite," Louis pointed out, taking a cigarette out of his breast pocket. As soon as he did, Ibuki slid by Sabine, a lighter in his hand, and held it up to the buck's mouth. Louis took a few puffs to get the end lit.

"Well, he was," Sabine said with raised eyebrows.

Louis blew smoke in her direction, which she waved away with her hand. "It's still rude."

"He was a dickhead, boss," Agata whispered.

Louis shot the lion an annoyed glance.

"You blowing smoke in other beasts' faces' is rude," Sabine said, trying not to snap, when what she really wanted to say was, _Really Louis? You're going to be a dickhead, too? I thought I was supposed to be your godmother._

"You're right," the buck said, much to Sabine's surprise. It must have shown on her face and body language, because his smile changed dramatically, from the calculated one to something that actually looked genuine. It lasted only a moment, but it was long enough that she saw it. "I was told you were quite the ambassador. I wouldn't have believed it, but maybe your forthrightness is what makes you so good at being the messenger." He tilted his head, the smile becoming malicious again. "Oh, but that's not right is it? From what I hear, Sabine says 'Jump,' Viggo asks, 'How high?'"

There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment as Sabine processed what the buck said. She kept her violet eyes directly on his and in a low voice drawled, "You are treading in very dangerous territory, Louis-kun."

She was not surprised to hear the click of two guns behind her head when she used the inferior honorific to the lions' leader. She kept her eyes on Louis, her ears forward and her tail high.

Again, there was an uncomfortable moment of silence, where the two deer stared at each other, both of them head on like carnivores, neither one yielding, before Louis waved his hand at Ibuki and Agata behind her, to indicate they put their guns away. He took a few steps toward her, closing the gap between them. "That is what I like about carnivores," he said with a smile. "When they know they have power and they use it." Placing his hand on Sabine's shoulder, he continued, "Tell Viggo thank you for the visit, and of course things will be as...amicable as always. I see no reason for them not to be."

"I will be sure to tell him such," she said, tilting her head to the side. She didn't have to really look up at the buck to look eye to eye at him, he was only an inch or two taller than she, and slight, like she was in her youth, but not any longer. Motherhood and maturity had broadened her out. Louis still had the physique of a boy. He squeezed her shoulder with her hand, but didn't let go. "We should have tea sometime, Louis-san," she continued, reaching into the breast pocket of her blazer and pulling out a business. "Catch up on the last few years."

His eyes flashed, she wasn't sure with what emotion. It was fast and momentary, but he let go of her shoulder and waved his hand again dismissively. "If time permits, Sabine-san," he returned. "I'm a busy man." He plucked the card from her fingers, looking at it dubiously.

"You can always call if you need a therapist," she said with a shrug. "Or a lawyer. I cat get you in touch with my brother."

"Ah yes, I hear he's excellent at defending criminals," Louis replied.

"Someone has to defend the bad guys," Sabine sang.

He chuckled, holding the card out to Ibuki. The lion took it and tucked it in his own breast pocked. The buck then turned from her, taking another drag from his cigarette. "The boys can show you out," he said, louder than he needed to, as he walked back toward the desk.

She wasn't going to try her luck any more that night, godmother or not. But she couldn't help but quip, "Have a good night, Godson. I hope to see you soon, love," before leaving the room, Ibuki in front of her, Agata behind her, like she was back in prison with the two guards flanking her to make sure that she didn't escape. For a moment, the memory of seeing him on the stage at Cherryton school, in the lead role as Adler the Grim Reaper, a famous play that anyone with any education knew, as only a second year student. When she'd gotten wind of it, she'd used her 'reindeer disguise', hiding her wolf tail, dressing a reindeer male, and watched him in the back of the auditorium. Her chest had been bursting with pride, as if she had anything to do with it, even though she knew she hadn't. But his performance had been stellar, the ovation standing, and even now, she couldn't help but smile.

_You're going to need to keep up the act, Louis,_ she thought, suddenly afraid for him. She was afraid for herself, and he was a boy—he had to be terrified. Either that, or he'd gone mad. Or maybe both. Her heart went out to him, but there was no way to let him know that now...or maybe ever.

She heard him answer, "Mmmmm…." surprised that he answered at all. Maybe he knew. Maybe he felt her heart go out to him, after all. Agata closed the door behind them, leaving them in the hallway.

"That was ballsy," Ibuki said, pausing in his walk so she came up beside him.

"Of him?" she answered, her apprehension still high enough that she made sure to do another body check. _Ears, are they relaxed? Check. Tail up, slightly aroused? Check? Hair on neck and lower back down? Check._ "You're right. If someone had said something like about Viggo and I ten years ago, I'd have killed them on the spot."

"Of you," he corrected. "Ten years ago, I'd have shot you on the spot," he said with raised eyebrows.

She looked up at him and winked, "Looks like both of us grew up a little, then."

The Maasai lion chuckled in response. He stopped at the front door, opening it for her.

She poked his breast pocket, trying to think of a way to lighten the tension. "You've got my number," she said. "Sometimes an old wolf with antlers gets lonely. Don't make it 15 years before I sit on your lap again."

He laughed outright. "You still got that necklace?" he asked.

"I most certainly do!" she said indignantly. "I'll wear it if you call." She winked, then stepped out the door and strode off with her wide gait, back home to report to Viggo.

A/N to unlock a bonus continuation of this chapter, and find out a little more about that poker game and the necklace, visit my ko-fi page at www dot ko-fi dot com slash illusionna


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